Repossessed!
by dykeatron
Summary: Tak is back from a year of drifting in her escape pod and is ready to get her ship back! However, not everything goes according to plan. Sorry, no shipping or OC's guys.
1. Impact

It was cold outside. Not freezing, but warmer than the vacuum of space that Tak had become accustomed to in the past year. The stars were clouded in the smog of the polluted purple sky, and she missed the crisp nebulae and stars that she had seen so often looking out the window of her escape pod.

She remembered it clearly, and made her knuckles whiten every time she thought about it. Being thrown against the back of her escape pod as it hurtled away into space, the remains of her robot rattling against the control panels. She could see everything she had worked for reversing because of an idiot's dumb luck. It had taken her months to build up that plan, to perfect the programming of her disguise. Before she had made her public appearance, she had spent hours researching, working, scheming. She could see it all, speeding away in the vacuum of outer space.

_Her head had slammed against the back panel of the pod, knocking her out. After what seemed like hours, she awoke on what seemed to be a Vortian ship. The pilots were hicks, there was no doubt about that. But they were politically ignorant enough to upgrade the Irken's sad excuse for a vehicle. It couldn't even compare to her Spittle Runner, but it would take her back to her destination in one piece. They had even been kind enough to put MiMi back together again, although her memory disc was gone for good. Tak figured this was for the better. It would be too humiliating for the little robot to remember their miserable failure as well. She made a note to pick up a new disc as soon as she could. _

_The Vortians waved goodbye as she put her upgraded pod into gear. They had given it a basic personality interface, and it chimed in in a monotone voice. Tak figured she should be thankful for all they had done for her, and she guessed she had pressed pretty hard onto their hospitality. For now, she was just thankful to get away from their low-tech ship and their lack of sophistication. _Long distance communication on line. Ready for takeoff._ The pod hovered over the landing deck and flew off tentatively into space._

"_All right, MiMi, time to get our affairs in order", Tak murmured. MiMi chirped in reply. Her intelligence was off due to the beating she had undergone, and to this day Tak couldn't understand what had caused her malfunction. _

_She brought up a keyboard and tapped in a few letters. "Connect to the Massive's main line," she ordered. The pod's computer clicked and brought up a screen. The computer let out a low drone as it connected to the Irken flagship. A burst of static, and she could see into the vessel's main chamber. The Tallest looked the same as ever, lazing about like pampered Earth cats._

"_Ah, look who it is. Your name was… Tak, wasn't it?" Red waved a claw as he searched for her name.  
>"That's correct, my Tallest, a-" Tak began.<br>"Weren't you the one who tried to take Zim's mission?" Purple interjected.  
>"Well yes… I, but-"<br>"We haven't heard much from you, soldier. Did you succeed?" Red leaned forward.  
>"Well-"<br>"No need to explain, we already know all about it. We were beginning to think you had been blasted into smithereens." Red snapped.  
>"There were some problems, yes, but I can explain!" Tak yelped. Her cheeks flushed. This wasn't going as well as she planned.<br>"Listen, we sympathize with you, but we have more pressing matters to address than a drone looking for a boost in rank." Purple sank back and shrugged. Red nodded in agreement.  
>"Please, if you'll just hear me out, I can do it this time!" Tak said more urgently.<br>"You have a little while to go until Devastis holds its next admission for the Elite. I'm sure you'll pass, okay? Call us back in about twenty years and we'll see if we can squeeze you in." Red drawled.  
>"My Talle-" Tak pleaded.<em>

Click.

Transmission ended, _Tak heard the computer drone in her own voice. She groaned and covered her face with her hands. No, this was not what she had planned. A sudden flush of anger filled her. Why, when she was clearly the most capable of any Irken, did she get shoved to the side repeatedly? She slammed a fist onto the main board, and MiMi flinched. _

"_Change of course, MiMi. We're going to Earth, all right, and we're making a few visits," she growled._

She stepped out onto the cracked concrete of a rooftop. If she had a nose, it would have crinkled in disgust of the odor that assaulted her upon landing. Earth had a noticeable stink that was a constant plague upon her keen senses. A combination of stale meat, sewer water, and smoke drifted in the air, and Tak wondered how the humans were able to put up with it all. It made her yearn to be back on the meticulously swept streets of Irk. Compared to her planet of origin, Earth was stuck in the Dark Ages. She understood why Zim felt the need to constantly make ostentatious references to Earth's general stink.

Zim.

She breathed in a gust of the foul Earth air, fists clenching. This was her first stop. From down the street, she could see the magenta glow of his ridiculous "base". She clicked the implant in her temple, and a sensation of static shock coated her. Looking down, she saw the human skin that had gone unused for a year. She had taken care to upgrade the disguise even further while she drifted in space. While a hand would have passed with a static swish through her holographic hair, she had given it the illusion of having texture, along with the leather bag on her back. Her spider legs retracted and hoisted her down to the dry grass below. "Come, Mimi!" Tak barked. The modified SIR Unit became almost invisible as she switched into her cat form and slid down the side of the house.

From the position of the moon, Tak guessed it was roughly midnight. A lone car zoomed down the street, and Tak kept her hands in her pockets. A gust of wind blew her "hair" in her face, and she attempted to swat it away. MiMi padded silently alongside her, making faint metallic clicks on the cracked sidewalk.

Zim's base hummed with electricity from his excuse for a defense system. Tak walked down the middle of the cal-de-sac and approached the imposing green house, lawn gnomes trained on her and her "cat". "All right, MiMi. You know what to do." MiMi chirped in reply.

She walked up the front walk. Tak could feel the gnomes swiveling to follow her as she got closer to the door. Their robotic limbs hissed as they turned, and MiMi bunched up in apprehension. She remembered the last time she visited and decided to not take any chances waiting for Zim or his idiotic robots to answer the door. Her spider legs emerged from her PAK and met to face the front of the house. Balls of white-hot energy formed at the end, and she guessed the lawn gnomes had already informed Zim of her presence. The tips of her spider legs blasted away the front door, and the bright purple door slammed into the back of the foyer.

The lawn gnomes hummed as they prepared to blast her apart with their lasers. Tak bent her legs and jumped, her spider legs hooking onto the ceilings pipes and tubes. MiMi followed, dashing as a black streak into a nook in the ceiling.

"_What is this_?" A familiar, high-pitched voice called from the back room. Tak narrowed her eyes and nestled deeper into the pipes. She nodded at MiMi, and the little robot unleashed a small amount of the same bugs she had used on the little Irken the last time she had visited. They disappeared into the ceiling, leaving sparks of green light as they went.

Zim appeared down below, a look of anger and shock on his face as he assessed the damage done to his home. "What's going on? Who are you?" He called out to his invisible attacker.

Tak nodded once more to her robot and dropped down as he walked directly below her.

"_Ooph_!" Zim had the air knocked out of him as she landed on him, keeping a single spider leg out to pin him to the tiled floor. He opened an eye and registered who had assaulted him.

"Tak!" His hoarse voice growled. "What are you doing here?"  
>"Taking care of what I left last time. It's been a while," she pressed down on his chest with the spider leg and he winced in pain, "<em>hasn't it<em>?" Up above, a tube snapped as a bug disabled it. Sparks rained down on them, and Zim squirmed.

"Listen, you don't have to do anything brash, okay? Just, calm down!" Zim shrieked. Tak scowled and pressed down on his chest further. He yelped. "I know something that you should know before you cut my head off, okay? Just, just let me go first!"  
>"Like what?" Tak said suspiciously. She let up her hold on him just barely, and encouraged, he pressed his luck.<br>"I know where your ship is," he panted. Tak's eyes widened.  
>"As if I couldn't find out where it is myself. The escape pod can locate it."<br>"Ha, that tin can you launched off in?" Zim laughed hoarsely. "No, I'll save you the trouble. The Dib-human has it. He's been working on it for a while now. I think he even got it to fly. He keeps it in his garage." Zim babbled a bit too quickly. He was desperate to be unleashed.  
>Tak withdrew her spider leg and kicked him hard in the side. He wretched and got on his knees, coughing. Tak leaned forward to hiss in what would have been his ear. "You'd better hope that you've been telling the truth, because if I get there and my ship isn't there, I'll make sure you don't die very quickly. You think maybe the Tallest will bump me up a few ranks if I bring them your head on a platter?" She hissed.<br>Zim turned his head to look her in the eye. "You're crazy," he whispered.  
>"Good to know." She stood up and clicked for MiMi to come down. She dashed out through the gaping hole in the wall and stopped once more to behead the lawn gnomes.<p>

"Wait!" Zim called as she walked out. "I'm just saying, you'd better not hope to resume your little magma plan. The base got taken down. It's entirely gone. And I've heard your false father is on the lookout now. He caught onto being kidnapped, you know." Tak could hear the smirk in his voice.  
>"I'll keep that in mind." She said, waving it off. She could find other people to get resources from.<p>

With a sweep on her hand, she was gone.

It took her a few minutes, but she had yanked the coordinates from her computer. With the shied down, Tak was buffeted by the cold night air of Earth. From the image on the onboard screen, Tak could just barely see that the house was several blocks away. MiMi leapt into the back of the pod and switched out of her disguise. "We're upgrading from this old heap of junk, MiMi. Just a little while longer." Tak reeled up the window and jolted the upgraded escape pod into gear.

She kept just above the rooftops, gliding through the air unnoticed. The engine the Vortians had installed sputtered, and Tak guessed it was overheating. She remembered the warning the drifters had given her as she watched them fix it up into a proper vehicle.

"_Now, yer gonna wanna make sure ya don't fly this puppy too much, it ain't meant fer long periods o' travel." The engineer with oil on his face and hands patted the top of the little pod. "But take care of 'er and she'll getcha ter where yer goin'."_

Tak guessed she had started "flying that puppy too much", because she began hearing the popping of static in the back. MiMi lifted her head to identify the noise. Luckily, the pod had already located its destination. "Be on the lookout, we don't know how long the ape stays up," Tak murmured, laying a hand on her metallic head.

Even as a heap of separate parts, the SIR had been her only companion for the entirety of the journey. She remembered assembling and buffing up the rusty parts of her robot, a last-minute addition after finishing her ship. Under her touch, the robot hummed with acknowledgement. It couldn't feel love, not unlike her master, but they had a deep trust and sense of loyalty to the other.

The pod settled in the shrubbery in the human's back yard. Tak tried to recall the name of the human who had taken her ship. It was 'Dib', wasn't it? Yes, according to Zim, it was. She settled back in the pod and decided to watch for activity. Tak conjured up some of her memories of the brief time she spend in Earth's public. Truthfully, she had spent most of the time underground, living off the resources of her "father" and researching her role as a human. If Zim was any clue to a failed attempt to blend in, she was thankful she had spent so much time trying to fit into the society.

The child had seemed nice enough, although she found he was too willing to puke up any information she had needed. However gullible and clingy the human was, he had to be more than capable if he had gotten the ship to fly again. Tak had given up hope that the ship had survived the beating it took, much less that it landed in the backyard of one of the only humans she had interacted with.

A light in the uppermost window switched out, and Tak climbed out from her pod. The garage lay only yards away, and the computer clicked as it recognized its mother ship. _Main vessel located. _"Yes, we know," Tak sighed and ran a hand over the dashboard. She stretched her legs, finding that she had grown aching and claustrophobic after spending so much time in the cramped pod. Tak wondered why she hadn't just asked for a ship from the Vortians, although she doubted they had many to spare.

She walked tentatively out into the open yard, cloaked in a disguise that rendered her invisible. Looking down, all she could see were the footprints her steel-toed boots left in the malnourished grass. MiMi followed, lurking about the sparse trees.

Tak approached the cold metal of the garage door and ran a gloved hand over the latch. "MiMi, take care of this," she hissed. The robot hummed and pried the door open. Tak winced at the shrill noise it made and looked up. The light in the window remained off, and no figure appeared through the glass. MiMi stopped to where they could just barely squeeze in and reeled in her large metal claw.

She slid in on her back, grunting as she righted herself. The garage was dark and cold, and reeked of oil and steel. MiMi found a chain and pulled it, illuminating the interior in a dim yellow glow.

It was poorly covered, but it was definitely her ship.

Tak felt her heart flutter as she reached forward and yanked the tarp from her ship. It was dented and appeared to be singed in places, but it was in marvelous condition for what it had gone through. She ran a hand over the insignia she had stenciled herself. The paint was intact, and the glass in the shield appeared to have been refitted and remade. To her surprise, the cockpit opened up at her touch. Hesitantly, she got in. She switched off both of her disguises, leaving herself exposed in her Irken form.

There were still holes and chips in the metal paneling, but the computer appeared to be working. She fired it up and brought up a few screens. The vessel hummed into life, and Tak felt a smile spread on her face. MiMi clicked with approval and settled into the ship. "We can hook the pod up and get this ship whole again, just you wait and see," Tak murmured reassuringly. Due to the silence of the ship, Tak realized that her personality interface had been wiped from the hard drive. "That's too bad, I was hoping this thing would put up a fight." Tak sighed. With the press of a few buttons, the headband fell from a hatch above and latched itself to her head.

She braced herself as the screws dug themselves in. She remembered the first time she had downloaded her personality into the Runner. Wincing at the memory, Tak kept her finger hovering over the button that would make the program cease. After a sharp jolt from the machine, she forced her finger down and halted the ships progress.

_Personality transfer complete. Rebuilding onboard computer, _Tak heard in her own voice.  
>"Welcome back," Tak laughed in relief. Looking up, she could see that the garage didn't have much room to move around. She switched it into gear to test if it really could fly. The ship hovered a foot or two before she lowered it down to the platform. "Yes!" Tak pumped her fist in the air. "We can set off sooner than I thought, MiMi."<p>

"Computer," Tak barked. The ship beeped in acknowledgement. "Identify our escape pod and prepare for reconnecting."  
><em>Pod identified. Preparing for reconnection with pod computer.<br>_Through the door, Tak could see the escape pod light up. She hoisted herself out and stretched, pleased with how the night had turned out. Zim hadn't been lying after all, although she still planned on returning to beat the stuffing out of him for putting her through so much trouble.

Tak kicked the tarp aside and pulled the garage door open further. She could bring the pod forward, have the ship hook them up, and disable the additions made by the Vortians. Tak dashed through the yard and hopped into the pod, having it glide forward and swivel around to be hooked up to the ship. She bent down and yanked apart the removable engine the Vortians had attached to it. Tak stood and laughed, hands on her hips. The pod would now fit smoothly within the main ship.

Behind her, she could hear a door softly close and footsteps approach from the back of the room. Antennae perked, she halfway turned to see a slightly taller version of the human Zim had referred to as 'Dib'.

"What are you doing?"

Tak turned to face him. "You had something that belonged to me." She said in a calm, low voice.  
>"I thought you may have died." If Dib was surprised to see her, he was good at hiding it. He still had on the trench coat that she had seen him in last. He approached slowly, as if worried she would whip out a gun and shoot him on the spot.<br>"Well, obviously you were mistaken." Tak crossed her arms. MiMi climbed from the ship and stood poised between the human and her master.  
>"I worked on that ship for hours. I thought I would never get it fixed." Dib looked at the ship like it was his child, jaw tight.<br>"You didn't do a half bad job, for someone working with amateur tools." Tak tensed, ready for him to put up a fight. He was strangely calm.  
>"Thanks, I guess." Silence.<br>"You're not going to scream and fight for it?" Tak pressed.  
>"You're not going to bash my head in for walking in on you?" Dib retorted. Tak felt her shoulders slacken as he continued. "I've gotten a lot of help from that ship. Hacked into Zim's files, for example. I was going to use it to, you know. Go out there." He gestured to the purple sky outside and his voice cracked as if he were holding back tears. "It must seem childish to you. To someone who's gone out there so often." Tak tilted her head to the side and analyzed the human before her. He was letting go of something he had poured his heart into without any fight.<br>"How old are you, anyway?" Dib asked. He forced his eyes from the ship and met Tak's. She searched his face for any emotion. Anger, stubbornness, despair. She found nothing.  
>"About one hundred. That's older than most of your kind gets, isn't it?" Dib nodded and looked to the ground, jaw set.<br>"You have to understand. This ship was my ticket out of exile. That was a long time ago. This ship is part of me." Tak explained as if speaking to a small child. And compared to her, Dib was. He nodded and drew in a tight breath as if ready to break down sobbing.

A gust of wind blew a few dry and wrinkled leaves into the garage. _Ready to connect with side pod_, the ship announced. Dib flinched and drew his arms up as if hugging himself. "You're leaving, then."  
>"Oh, I'll stay around for a while. Maybe kill Zim. Same deal as last time." Tak shrugged, and she thought she saw the ghost of a smile on Dib's face.<br>"It's been almost a year. Eleven months, just about." He whispered.  
>"How endearing, you kept track." Tak frowned. She got the creeping feeling he was stalling for time and latched onto the escape pod as the ship reached out its tentacles. It found what it was looking for and hooked onto the pod, bringing it forward. With a metallic groan, the pod was hauled into the ship, making it almost twice its original size.<p>

"When will you be leaving?" Dib asked, coughing.  
>"Soon enough. The Tallest aren't going to make me an Invader any time soon." She sighed and pondered at why she was telling him this. "Another twenty years and I can retake my test, get out of exile. I'll be fine."<br>"Good for you," Dib sighed and kicked a leaf that rolled towards him. Tak rolled her eyes and placed her hands on her hips.  
>"Listen, obviously you're capable of building your own ship. You've bound to have learned enough from this old thing, anyhow. Stop moping, all right?" Dib looked up and made that chilling eye contact with her again. After a moment, he nodded.<p>

Tak climbed into her ship and directed it from the dark garage. Dib stepped out and watched it rise, leaves and wind billowing about him. The tail of his trench coat rose and whipped about as the ship rose higher. Tak waved half-heartedly from the cockpit, and he returned the gesture. In a streak of red, the alien and her robot were gone.

Dib sighed and turned back to face the house. The garage seemed oddly empty.

He stepped inside and switched out the light. He had seen enough for one night.


	2. Another Option

Dib went to bed as the sound of her ship engine faded off. He lay there for a long time, regretting that he had let her get away with the child of his hard work and dedication. He tossed and turned with his glasses still on, worrying and worrying. Would she come back to school? Would she drain the Earth dry again? He pondered her idea of killing Zim. He smiled at the thought, but doubted she would actually do it. Then he remembered the girl he thought was his own age. No, she was an almost ancient creature, from a planet where death and destruction were celebrated. He at least hoped he'd be present when he died.

After two hours of his mind screaming at him and failing miserably at sleep, he sat up and propped his elbows on the window. Above the treetops he could see the skyline of the downtown area, which had had Tak's ostentatious base taken down six months before. The CEO kept out of the public nowadays, and Dib figured he was afraid of being knocked out and put in a tube of liquid again.

He almost hoped it was Sunday, just to see if she would turn up in the morning. He doubted she would, after all, she had no need to. She had accomplished what she wanted for now: taking back her ship that had become what Dib considered his property. Thinking back, she hadn't even thanked him for fixing the rubble that was her ship when it had crashed. Maybe she wasn't _capable _of gratitude, although he had taken her curt praise of his repair as thanks enough.

_Well, isn't that great_, Dib thought, _an alien invader is grateful that I provided her easy transport to conquer the planet_. He clung to hope that she wasn't after conquest this time around. Her presence still set him on edge, however. He wished, momentarily, that he had been correct in assuming she had been killed as the ship fell to Earth. Dib remembered shock as the shield of the vessel opened and there was no charred body within. There was still a chance she could be thrown out, he hoped. He could tell Zim, if he hadn't already been choked to death by the female Irken. Yes, that could work. Zim hated the threat of Tak as much as Dib, at least.

There was another option, however, that itched in the back of Dib's mind and struggled to gain credibility.

No, it couldn't work. It was almost wrong. Like picking a fight and making a friend do the punching. Dib looked over to the laptop sitting at the foot of the bed and considered it.

He opened it up tentatively, blinded by the white light of the screen. Squinting, he brought up a new tab and started typing a headline, fingers shaking. He considered what would draw their attention the easiest, and decided on one after a moment.

"Evidence of a second alien."

Yes, that would entice the Swollen Eyeball Network well enough.


	3. Base of Operations

Tak felt an unfamiliar stirring of joy swell inside of her as she saw the city pass below her. For the past year she had sulked from satellite to satellite, stopping to make last-minute repairs on her makeshift ship. MiMi hummed contentedly in the back, and Tak drummed her fingers on the dashboard. She guessed that out of the two of them, the SIR was the most pleased. Upon building them during her time on Dirt, she had connected her and the ship remotely; MiMi was a type of remote control that could be used if she couldn't control the ship herself.

There was a problem of setting up a base; Tak had seen that Zim was telling the truth when he said that her old base had been taken down when they flew over a giant metal scar in the middle of the city. She thought it was a shame after she had gone to so much trouble, but she could just as easily build a new one. The official Invaders weren't the only ones with the means to make a more than capable lair.

The skyscrapers thinned out and became blotches of trees that looked like smears of black in the night. She led the ship gradually lower until it sank below the tree line and drifted to a soft landing in the grass. Tak clambered out and onto the top of the vessel, perching like a songbird. She ran her hands over the metal, absentmindedly picking at spots that would have to be painted back over. MiMi dashed out and curled up beside her. The park, or whatever it was, hummed with the sound of wildlife. The chorus of insects and nocturnal birds reminded Tak of a particular obstacle course she had to fight her way through during her military training. She remembered a giant lizard, oozing up out of its cave in the earth and swinging at her with savage brutality. She had almost lost her leg during that brushing.

And look where she was now. On an uncivilized, filth-ridden planet, chasing after an idiot and programmed as a janitorial drone as a reward for years of hard work. She hung her head as bitter, angry tears threatened. MiMi lifted her head as if sensing her swing in emotion. Her face remained dry, because she was an Irken, and Irkens didn't cry because Irkens were superior. Light-years away, Irk sat with its sprawling metropolises and a sky of palest pink, reaching out its tentacles to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. And the Tallest sat in their flagship and let their subjects do the work.

Her fists clenched for the slightest moment before she forced herself to relax again. Surely her PAK wouldn't even allow her to think so critically of her leaders. She sighed, and a gust of air chilled in the air in front of her and swirled like dragon's breath. _Quit the self pity_, she scolded herself, _you are an Irken and you are going to get what you deserve_. She couldn't sleep, and had hours to set up at least a temporary home. She slid off the top of the ship and rummaged in the back, which opened with a stubborn groan from rust and bent edges. A little silver capsule sat in the back, and she breathed a sigh of relief that it had escaped damage. After all, it _was_ her backup plan.

She slid it open, and it took on the appearance of a tablet and pen. With a few whisks of her hand, she shoved it unceremoniously into the dirt and drew the ship off to the side. From below, the dirt hummed faintly. Tak leaned against the ships side and whistled to herself.

Maybe being here wouldn't be so bad after all.


	4. The Man in Black

Tak poked her head out of her new "house" when the sound of a morning dove announced the hour. It was small and could be considered little more than a cottage, but it was inconspicuous and blended in well. Unlike Zim's programming, Tak's chose a wiser color scheme that fit in and looked okay aesthetically. The true base was below, and she had spent all night tinkering with the machines that had unfurled below like some sort of underground Garden of Eden. She felt at peace, experimenting and building in the privacy of her labs rather than floating in space in a tin can, and she wondered why she hadn't bothered to do so on one of her many emergency stops.

The sky was a pale yellow, and for just a moment Tak yearned for the familiar milky purple that preceded the pink. A single sun sat in the sky, and Tak could make out the ghost of the moon setting back below the horizon. She stepped out and cloaked herself in her human skin, stepping through the dew-damp trees to the city. There was no point in hanging around her base if she wanted to make a quick departure from this ball of dirt. Tak found that her mind was still clouded with the excitement of her return. By focusing on the alien terrain surrounding her, she distracted herself from the big question: what would she do next, now that the first phase was complete?

MiMi drifted beside her, winding around the trees as if as listless as her master. She watched her surrounding transform from suburb to the city outskirts to the slowly awakening city. Tak passed through the throngs of humans unnoticed, and MiMi drew closer to her.

Tak let her vision wander, sometimes lingering on a particular sign or person. She wandered aimlessly, kicking litter along the sidewalk and keeping her hands buried in her pockets. Somewhere halfway through the city streets, Tak's eyes wandered to a man in a black suit. He glanced at her once and turned away, and she resumed her passage.

Two blocks further, she saw him again, his eyes trained on her for just a moment longer. His eyes were shaded by sunglasses, and he betrayed no emotion. She stared at him until he drove along the opposite way in a shining black car. Again she continued, although her heart fluttered with what may have been apprehension. She had been trained thoroughly during her time in underground Irk, enough to be just faintly paranoid of the man. MiMi wound around her legs with a reassuring click. _Nothing to fear_, she seemed to be saying.

As an hour or so passed by of her journeying, the sun reached its ascent in the sky and bathed the world in red. Tak thought that the Earth sky was rather crude, and figured that they had somehow darkened the sky with their odor and their filth. How could she know that the sky had undergone a much worse beating, and had once been an immaculate blue?

She drew her eyes away from the new red sky, focusing on two younger humans with clasped hands. Tak envied the humans in this city, for their closeness that they seemed to take advantage of. She noted this to herself as an angry cab driver honked at a slow man crossing an intersection. She was utterly alone on this planet, and had no future back home for at least twenty years. Well, at least she had Zim, if "had" meant "had marked to kill". Even amongst Irkens, she felt completely isolated, as if watching them from above.

Tak stopped in the middle of the street when she saw the man again, standing by his car which was now parked farther down the street from her. A teenaged boy swore and passed her after nearly running into her back. Unfazed, she kept her eyes slightly averted, watching from the corner of her eye. He did not turn away or leave this time; rather, he (presumably, considering his eyes were not visible) kept his eyes on her and did not turn to get back in his car. Tak drew in a nervous breath, and MiMi hissed almost inaudibly as they neared him. Was he working for her false father? Tak swore in her mind. What if he had been looking for her, to arrest the mysterious girl who had kidnapped him and sapped him of his resources like milk from a cow?

She passed him quickly, feeling her insides tighten with fear. As she passed around the corner, she took the smallest glance back. The man was planted where he stood, and watched her with the same intensity as before.

"Come on, MiMi," Tak hissed under her breath, and the SIR dashed ahead of her.


	5. Negotiations and Revenge

"It would help if you had more photos, you know", a Network agent drawled through the computer. Dib could see nothing of her but a black silhouette and two red eyes, a status he had not yet reached himself. The agent's voice reaffirmed what had often annoyed Dib about the Swollen Eyeballs: they didn't take him very seriously much of the time. Albeit, neither did anybody else.

"I know, but she was here very briefly the last time she was here. All I have is a bunch of information from her ship, and even that's gone." Dib sighed.  
>"I cannot believe you let the thing get away with the best piece of evidence you had, Agent Mothman. Appalling, really. What respectable agent throws away the evidence he has?" The agent snapped, eyes narrow. "You have no evidence that it is anything but human?"<br>"I briefly saw her – _it _– out of its disguise, but I didn't capture the image. I've only ever seen it in person in disguise. It's a lot… better at hiding itself than the other one."  
>"The Zim creature you're always talking about?" The agent asked.<br>"The very one," said Dib.

There was a sound of fingers on a keyboard, and Dib looked briefly out the window. This was a waste of time, but it was too late to go back on his decision to report a second Irken.

"Listen we have an agent on it already," The agent said, and Dib's ears perked up at the news. "I just got an email from him. From the very _few _photos you were able to provide us with," – Dibs ears burned at this – "he was able to identify her downtown. He's trailing her as we speak."  
>"That's great, I suppose." Dib almost laughed out loud.<br>"I should hope so. You should be glad we've taken the time to investigate this after all of the scanty evidence you've given us before," the agent grunted.  
>"I've sent you videos and photos numerous enough to fill up your lobby!" Dib barked indignantly. The agent sighed.<br>"We're a busy Network, Agent Mothman. I apologize if we can't run on your schedule".

_Click._

Dib sat back and sighed, heart pounding. So Tak was being followed. He supposed they would capture her, or at least keep tabs on where she went. He had hoped to gain his fame by taking down Zim, but Tak was just as good, if not better considering how much slyer she was than her fellow Irken. Dib felt a sense of self-satisfaction at what he had accomplished in the span of less than a day.

"Consider this revenge for taking my ship," said Dib to the absent alien.


	6. Found Out

Although she hated the planet that she considered barely a civilization, Tak had to admit that a lot of the things that happened in the city were interesting to watch. She slowed down just to watch the humans act out their ridiculous customs and quirks like some sort of play. As the early afternoon whittled away, Tak watched teenagers fight, children fuss, and the elderly shuffle along. She eavesdropped on passing conversations and smiled ruefully at the trivial concerns of this race.

She was glad that at least Irkens had programming to keep them in check. No petty quarrels amongst a species that should be working toward a common goal, no troublesome emotions like love and affection that these people seemed to trip on their own feet over. As she walked, Tak became increasingly aware that she had no real destination, and became concerned that she would have a hard time finding her way back to her station.

Deciding to turn back, she rounded briskly around a bus stop and went back the way she came, hoping that she would remember the way back. "Have your guidance chip in, MiMi?" Tak asked, looking down at the "cat". MiMi looked up and clicked, her holographic tail lashing. After her last encounter with the man in black, she had taken care to analyze everyone around her. Eyes peeled, she rounded the corner.

"Oh, you're kidding me," groaned Tak.

The man was just ahead, and he was coming toward her.

MiMi's holographic fur bristled at the neck, and in under the disguise Tak knew that the SIR was poised with her modified claw in the air.

Tak drew herself off to the side, squeezing past a middle aged woman to the brick wall on the other side. She slowed and waited for him to pass, but rather, he stopped in front of her. Feeling rather cornered, Tak hunched her shoulders. "Can I help you?" she said in almost a growl.

The man fished out a paper from the inside of his suit. He casually flipped it open long enough to show a thumbnail of his face and an insignia that resembled some sort of series of circles before he tucked it away again. "I'm afraid, miss, that your meandering on planets other than your own has come to an end."  
>Tak felt cold. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she said in a whisper. A few people turned to look at the man and what looked like a preteen girl in such a tense staredown. Feeling threatened, she activated the chip attached to her temple that seemed to work so well on the rest of the humans. A purple spark danced across her eyes, and the man smiled. "Oh, your psychic tricks aren't going to work on any of us. We're a bit smarter than the rest of the herd." Tak frowned.<br>"Why are you doing this?"  
>"You've been turned in, I'm afraid. We have evidence, mainly in the form of the ship you left behind you." The man was taller up close, and Tak felt sure that she would not get away easily. It took her a moment for the last part of his sentence to register, and instantly she knew who had turned her in. She felt her face redden. <em>Dib!<em>

"You're going to want to come with me," said the man. He gestured to his car, parked down the block, and withdrew what looked like handcuffs from his suit. A few more paused to slow down and look at the scene, and Tak analyzed her situation. Stuck with a case of fight or flight in the public arena, the small Irken chose flight.

She ran for it.

Tak heard the man close behind her, mainly from the squawking and crashing of those being shoved out of his way. MiMi was right behind her, dashing nimbly as if made of air. Every obstacle course and timed maze flashed through her head like a flipbook. She threw herself over guardrails, jumped onto moving car roofs and took every random turn she could. Tak felt the faintest shine of sweat on her forehead, not daring to turn back.

When she shoved past a policeman leaning against a brick wall, Tak briefly considered turning back and hoping that the officer would take pity, leading away the man trying to arrest an innocent child for being something as absurd as an alien. Turning back, she saw the policeman holding the man by the arm, and she felt a jolt of hope.

Her heart sank when they both turned to run after her.

Tak threw herself around the corner, jumping clear over a boy crouching to tie his shoe. She heard a muffled command from the policeman and ran faster. She was sure that they were thoroughly lost by now, and hoped MiMi could guide them home if they made it.

Suddenly, Tak was struck with an idea.

She veered into the nearest alley and hid by a dumpster that reeked of rot, switching on the panel that made her an invisible as air. Tak doubled over, hands on her knees, breathing heavily from the chase. Her heart beat three times faster than before, and MiMi followed suit by cloaking herself. "Why didn't I think of this before?" Tak coughed to herself in frustration. She straightened up and wiped her forward, feeling exhausted.

If she went out onto the street, she could easily be brushed up against. The invisibility would falter, and maybe even her human cover would break up as well. The last thing Tak wanted was to be the little green girl amongst a planet of enemies. She weighed her options.

"It's the end of the line!" a voice from nearby called. Tak snapped to attention and saw the man and the officer coming at her from the other side of the alley. The man had goggles on, a green light on the bridge blinking.  
>"This has to be a joke," Tak moaned as they inched towards her. The officer had what looked like a taser aimed at her.<br>"Just stay where you are and I won't have to hurt you," the man said in a more subdued tone.  
>"As if you're not going to cut me up like butchers meat," Tak spat. She backed up towards the street, switching the invisibility option off. The officer, getting a better view of her, held the gun higher.<br>"Oh, we aren't savages. But we will have to incarcerate you for what we've heard," the man explained as if speaking to a child. "Don't make anymore of a scene. Just come with me."  
>Tak paused a foot away from the sidewalk and clicked to MiMi in a way inaudible to the man. She cocked her head up to face her master.<p>

"Attack," she murmured.

MiMi flickered from her cat form and launched herself at the man, clawing him with her talon-like hand. He fell back and Tak ran back out to the street. The SIR was more than capable of finding her on her own.

This left the officer behind, and looking behind she saw that he had switched whatever weapon he had for a gun. The man may have had semi-decent intentions, but this man obviously did not.

Tak ran around the corner and stopped short at a sidewalk roped off with caution tape. The sidewalk was torn up, and mud littered the side of the road instead. She looked forward, only to see that the street was clogged with fast paced cars zooming too quickly to be leapt on or over.

She looked behind her, gulping. Behind the running officer was the man once more, looking disheveled and very much ridden of MiMi. Tak felt a creeping sense of horror.

Tak looked at the steady stream of cars and crouched, preparing to withdraw her spider legs.

When a sound like a war cannon cracked in the air and Tak's world went black.


	7. The Gates

Irkens, being very much made up of mechanics, do not require sleep. Run by their PAKs, they are recharged not unlike phones or computers. Tak had never slept in her life, not counting the slumber she drifted through before being cracked open by a robotic arm in an underground Smeeterie. She was familiar with the concept of it, but thought it as an inferior concept for inferior species, and felt sick at the idea of experiencing it.

_She lay in a world of darkness. Everything was cold. She felt as if even the blood in her veins had frozen solid, leaving her to meld with the ice around her. She was faintly aware that she had a body, and tried to move a finger._

_She felt herself lifting up, like invisible arms were raising her into a proper position. Although she felt solid and freezing cold, the air around her became warmer. Tak regained her senses, and the depth of the black around her eased into a sensible palette of color._

_Was it a dream? It couldn't be, because she couldn't dream. She couldn't recall how she had gotten here, but it seemed right that she was. It seemed oddly correct, to be back on Irk._

_Tak was hooded in the traveling cloaks of a commoner. The purple silk brushed the marble paths leading up to the main Metropolis. Looking around, there were others like her all around. Some were shaded by their cloaks, others let their antennae perk up free. Tak slowly reached for the dark purple of her hood and lifted it up over her head._

_All were silent, and none turned to speak to the other. Two lavender and pink suns hung in the air, just as Tak remembered them. She swelled with a powerful emotion she couldn't name. Pride? Love? She bustled down the swept and shining passageway, watching a few little Armada ships zoom narrowly overhead._

_Up ahead, the massive magenta gates opened to let in a few Irkens at a time. Guards with their hoods and electrical staffs halted them and had them scanned, beckoning them forward when approved. Tak neared the gates and drifted to a group of males to be brought forward._

_Gradually, she noticed that it was utterly silent. Even the ships above emitted no sound. She felt a shiver, and approached the gates. The males before her were ushered in, and the guard stopped her to sweep a mechanical wand over her._

_All of a sudden, everyone snapped to attention as if awakening and turned to look at Tak with cold, hateful eyes. "Excuse me, is something wrong?" she meant to say, but her voice felt choked as if she were being strangled. _

_A guard lifted his staff and prepared to strike her down._

Tak awoke with a great shudder and realized very quickly that she was in terrible pain. Her mouth widened to a surprised O, gripping her side and bringing away her hands.

Her hands came away soaked in the brightest green, and Tak became engulfed in fear.

She became aware that she was surrounded, her vision sharpened and she saw humans, humans all around her. Some were afraid, some angry, some horrified. They all withdrew with the sound of a siren and two bulky men in white approaching her with some time of bed on wheels. Looking to the side, Tak saw the man.

They were going to take her away, and she was going to die.

Something primal and made of pure hatred and fear rose up in her, and she jolted upright. The people around let out a collective gasp and backed up, but the paramedics continued their advance on her, arms held out.

Her spider legs retracted, effectively scaring off the people in the vicinity. They clung to the nearest safe place, unable to tear their eyes away. The legs hoisted her up several feet in the air, and looking down she saw the trail of green blood on the concrete. Her insides tightened with fear. No, this is not what she had planned at all.

"Now, see, if you had gone with me earlier we could have avoided this! You could have left subtly!" Cried the man, approaching with arms open as if asking for a hug. "Look at you now."  
>"Shut up!" Tak snapped, and her voice sounded dry and cracked. The legs backed up, and the crowd advanced.<p>

"You'll die without medical care," the man reasoned.  
>"Incorrect. Your primitive technology would kill me. You'd turn me into lunch meat," Tak spat.<br>"Do you expect to walk home by yourself when you're oozing blood? You need help," a paramedic piped up.

Without thinking, Tak leapt onto the fire escape, hooking on with her spider legs and letting them haul her to the roof. The man looked like he was sighing down below. "We need a helicopter or _something_," Tak heard from on the ground.

She drew in her legs and staggered to the ground, gripping her side and letting the pain crash over her in waves. Of everything she expected to happen on this planet, this had not been on the list. She had been so, _so _careful, and she let a child ruin her. She backed up to the door that led to the lower levels of the building and lost her resolved. Lying against the wall, she held her wound and watched as a helicopter landed, whipping her tailcoat in its wake.

Men in white came out, and she noticed the red cross on the side that defined it as a medical helicopter. This was it. She would die here, and never make it to the Invader class.

She had failed, and her failure was worse than the needle they shot her up with to plunge her back into black.


	8. Quivering with Rage

Dib was running. His heart was pounding, partly from the running, and partly from a mixture of nervousness and excitement. They had called him sooner than he thought they would, but the news was a bit more morbid than he had hoped for. She had stirred quite a scene, and no one noticed Dib run from the house after watching a quip of it on the news. She lay pale as ever on the filthy city street, soaking in blood. He briefly wondered if Zim was aware that the only other Irken for light-years was probably dying.

He wondered if he felt sadness at her failing health. Dib thought he should be pleased, but the idea of death still mortified him, and he felt no one _really _deserved it. He guessed it was the fact that he was still, in many ways, a child filled with a certain degree of pity, although his enemies certainly had none. The agents had failed to pick him up, and he caught up with the bus just as it was driving away.

He sat in the front, catching his breath from the mad dash. No one seemed to be in the street, and Dib hoped he was just being paranoid from thinking that it was because of Tak's horrible failure at keeping herself hidden. He thought it almost pitiful, because she had had so much potential. Then again, it was his prying that had left her at this point.

The bus passed through downtown as the red sky deepened to the purple of night. A throng of people hung around the building, including a few news vans and several men and women with microphones. Dib fought his way through, preparing to withdraw his Network card if he needed it.

"Dib!" A voice he had known for the past few years barked up behind him. Dib turned to see Zim among the crowd, a look of rage on his face. Dib turned fully and expected to be met with a poorly-executed tirade, or maybe a swift slap to the face. But none came. "Zim," he replied coolly. As the alien neared, Dib noticed something different about him.

Dib felt almost chilled at the reception he was given. He had never seen Zim like this, so angry that he seemed to have been frozen to the spot. He shook ever so slightly, and in his eyes burned a rage that could have torn Dib apart if they had been alone. His voice came out chillingly cold as he said, "I hope you don't plan on letting this go unpunished."  
>"What do you mean?" Dib asked, keeping his voice low.<br>"I know it was you. You reported her, and it's your fault she's dying."  
>Dib tilted his head to the side. "How cute. What makes you care all of a sudden?"<br>"I don't like her, that much is true." Zim quivered with white-hot rage. "But she's one of my kind. And I won't let a filthy primate like you be responsible for the death of one of my own. I'll report you myself if I have to."  
>"To whom, may I ask?"<br>"The Armada, you fool."  
>Dib snorted. "Very frightening. What'll you do when they find out she isn't the only specimen?"<br>Zim drew himself up as if defending himself. "I'm not staying here, I can tell you that."  
>Dib felt surprised, and almost hurt that he was giving up so quickly and without warning. "Leaving Earth?"<br>"No, this city. This planet is big enough. I can find somewhere else, and you can have a ball trying to find me." Zim hissed. "You're going to pay for this. Somehow, some day. You will regret ever thinking of turning her in."  
>"Sure," Dib said, eyes narrowing.<br>"Don't wait up," Zim sneered, and spat at his feet before turning on his heel and almost marching away. In a moment, he was lost in the crowd.

Dib stayed rooted to the spot for a moment, wondering if his enemy was really going to leave. A short montage of the last couple years flitted through his mind, and he felt almost disappointed. Surely the Irken, whose plans had started to greatly deteriorate over the past months, couldn't do any real harm?

Turning towards the hospital, he remembered what he came for and rushed inside, showing a guard his papers briefly before being ushered into a dimly lit elevator that led him to an even dimmer floor. The doors slid shut with a soft click, and he walked down the eerily silent hall, the guard shuffling behind.

A crash down the hall broke out, followed by an ear-splitting sound resembling an angry bat and an angrier housecat. It chilled Dib to the bone, and he pushed the doors at the end of the hall open to see an atrocious sight.

Tak was very much out of his disguise, kicking and screaming and putting up a general fight in all her savage Irken glory. Two men held her arms, but she kicked too hard for her legs to be restrained. Gauze wrapped around her whole torso, and neon green liquid oozed from the bandages. Her antennae were perked in rage, and her snakelike tongue darted in and out like a separate entity. Teeth bared and solid purple eyes narrowed, she looked like a monster. They had successfully wrestled her out of her uniform and into a hospital gown, and she looked small and out of place, almost innocent if it wasn't for the fight she was putting up.

"Unhand me! _Unhand me_!" she shrieked in an almost unrecognizable scream of a language. A woman came forward with a needle and she kicked her square in the gut, knocking the air out of her. Dib stepped back as she fell and approached the squirming creature. She laid her eyes on him, and although she had no pupils, he felt as if she were staring through him.

"_You_."

It came out as a whisper, and Tak fell limp. Lifted halfway off the floor as if she had thrown a tantrum there beforehand, her legs dangled crookedly to the floor, double-toed feet skidding on the tile. The doctors froze, unable to believe she had lost her fight so quickly. Tak looked serene for just a moment, the enormity of Dib's involvement sinking in.

And all at once, she exploded tenfold once more before she could be held back.

"_I'll kill all of you! Every last one! None of you will survive the wrath of the Irkens! You swine, you primitive dirt-licking animals! Our ships will be painted in your blood before you even know what's hit you!_" Several hulking, serious-faced men came in and bound her legs up, carrying her off to a separate ward by herself. Tak's screams gradually faded off, and herlast words were for Dib, and Dib alone.

"_You will regret this, you wretched worm! I'll strangle you with my bare hands_!"

After a minute or so, things quieted in the next room. The majority of the men and women left, and Dib eased his way inside. They had Tak in a normal hospital bed, although the machinery was a bit different. Dib recognized a few agents from the Network, and he nodded at them.

"Good work, Agent Mothman," murmured a man with a shaven head. He returned his gaze to Tak, now lying completely unconscious. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her eyes swiveled frantically under her eyelids. Otherwise, she looked calm. Dib approached the bed and looked at her with a mingled sense of fear, pity, and almost a drop of admiration for the fight she had put up.

"We'll send you down to the labs and you can see everything we're preparing for it," a woman with tightly drawn-back black hair said. She gave him a pass and he took it slowly.  
>"Does that include, you know," Dib swallowed, "stuff like autopsies?"<br>"Oh, we're not going to kill it. Just study it. We'll run a bunch of X-rays, take samples." She waved it off and Dib nodded.

As he opened the door, the bald man called "Maybe now we can start on that alien you've really been pushing us about." Dib set his mouth in a grimace.  
>"I wouldn't count on it," he replied, and left.<p> 


	9. Disabled

Down below, Dib floated as if in a dream through labs filled with scientists that looked as if their wildest dreams had all been granted. They showed each other, with great enthusiasm, the scant X-rays that they were able to get, and Dib found some interest in the biological aspects of their alien specimen. As they started planning skin samples, blood tests, and the possible surgery, Dib felt cold and almost angry.

Did he feel regret for winding her up in a hospital? Barely. At least, he hoped he wasn't ashamed. His father called at midnight, the time at which he had evidently gotten home, and Dib explained where he was. The Professor was too busy to get him or even check up on him, but he promised to see him soon and made his son promise in return to get home safely. Dib did so, exhausted, and hung up as the scientists started to turn in.

Walking up to Tak's room, every other light began to shut off as the hospital was settling down for the night. Dib guessed that no one was yet allowed in, for the chaos would be too great. Returning to the room, he found that the agents had both left. Whatever they had given her was causing her great panic even in unconsciousness, because Dib noticed that Tak's head was thrashing back in forth in whatever nightmare the medication had induced.

As he watched, his pity grew stronger until he felt deeply ashamed for trapping her like a bird. After all, she hadn't been after conquest. She couldn't be an Invader if she tried, at least not at this time. All she wanted was her beloved ship, and maybe a last stab at revenge. And he had snapped the trap on her.

His bag lay in the corner, and opening it up he saw that he had received an email from the Network in the last half hour. Skimming over it, Dib learned that in one of the city's parks, Tak's ship, as well as a small base were found hidden among the trees. However, whatever defenses Tak had set up prevented them from getting anywhere near the heart of her base. Dib was pleased at the bit of information, although he knew they would probably not hand the ship back over to him. They would take it for themselves, after his hard work at repairing it. Still, he sent in a request to get it back in his hands.

After an hour, watching the now defenseless Irken struggle in whatever reality she was drifting in became too much, and he went home.

In the morning, Dib took the bus again only to learn that Tak had been moved in the night to the Network upon arriving at the hospital. An agent lingering with the transferrel forms gave him a lift there, and he was swept into the sprawling white monster of the Swollen Eyeball Network for the first time in months.

Agents were everywhere, dots of black in the white atmosphere. Dib was led several floors underground to a series of dark hallways, the occasional window opening up to an empty white room. The redhead escorting him pointed casually to one of them. "It'll be moved to one of these when it's fit," she said lazily. "It still needs to recover from the shot, though. I think it'll be okay, considering it's proving to heal pretty fast." Dib was starting to get annoyed with everyone's choice of pronoun when she stopped by a medical-looking door. "Could help our own race, y'know." She winked and let him in, shutting the door and strutting away as he entered.

The room was almost obnoxiously white, and Tak lay in the back with a series of clear tubes leading into her arms. Walking closer, he saw that her forearms were raw with the needle jabs they had taken, perhaps an allergic reaction to the metal or whatever was in the needles. She looked paler than before, her skin a milky shade of green, with the skin under her eyes a more lime color. Her curled antennae drooped, laying flat against the pillow. Her fingers twitched as if reaching for the door that would lead her away, and her lips were dry and cracked. Overall, Tak looked a train wreck.

No one else remained in the room, and Dib drew up a chair and reflected on what he had done. They had stripped her of the gaudy hospital gown, and she was draped in little more than the tight gauze they used to stop her bleeding, although the agent claimed she was healing exceptionally fast. If the wound was healing, was it sickness and infection that made her look so deathly ill? Or perhaps it was a crushing misery, an overwhelming wave of failure that was making her Irken mind so focused on war and victory shut down? Dib felt a pang of pain strike his heart. Wrapped in gauze as if ready to be shipped to the funeral pyre, Tak resembled a fragile and broken bird with wings clipped. In her face, he saw the epitome of failure, the misery of someone who had worked so hard to achieve so little. He wondered what it was like to have all he worked for torn down, and the thought humbled him.

Her ragged breathing spiked, and Dib nearly jumped from his chair in fright. Her breath was labored, and she seemed to fight to get and keep her eyes open. She looked exhausted, and yet she knew she was not alone instantly. She turned to look at her visitor. All traces of bloodlust were gone.

"Feeling guilty?" she rasped. Dib dipped his head. She laughed, a painful sound that sent her into a coughing fit. Drawing her three-fingered hand away, Dib saw a splotch of blood on her palm. She was quick to hide the stain. "I knew you would find me here. Couldn't stay away, could you?"  
>"Too nosy for my own good, I guess," Dib shrugged, hands clasped nervously. Tak grinned, and she looked very old in doing so.<p>

"_How old are you, anyway?"  
>"About one hundred. That's older than most of your kind gets, isn't it?"<em>

Tak had lived ten times the life Dib had, and she was full of the wisdom and experience that came with living for quite a while. She had seen things he could never hope to see, and her age was catching up with her. She was no longer the perky, ferocious girl with the blue bob and penchant for trouble. She was sickly, frail, and so very far from home.

"They disabled the weapons in my PAK," breathed Tak, wrenching Dib from his thoughts. "I am stuck here. I asked them my first night here…." She paused to breathe in, and the sound was ragged and sad. "I asked them, give me my robot. At least let me have my robot." She closed her eyes and let out the saddest sigh Dib had ever heard. "The man who first tried to arrest me. He shot her down. She can be fixed but they… aren't going to let me." She opened her eyes, and they were lined with water. She turned her head slowly to look at Dib.

"That robot was my only companion. I built her out of rubble. She is like my own child." Tak sank back into the pillow and closed her eyes again. "They showed me the damage… I think, just to spite me. There was a terrible gap in her head. I don't think I can fix her by myself. She needs parts… parts I don't have." She shuddered with the force of talking so much. Dib stood to get her water and she made him sat back down. "Sit, I won't drink anything. None of that filth, anyway." A look of hopelessness crossed her face.

"I trained for… so long. I wanted to be an Invader so badly. I was good at it for a while, wasn't I?" She smiled sadly. "Is this your revenge, child? For bending you… so cruelly for my use?" Her smile disappeared and she became frighteningly serious.

Dib stared at her for a long moment and tore his eyes away. "No," he finally replied.

Tak nodded, seeming satisfied. "An Invader does what they need to succeed, much as you have done." Dib flinched at her words. "But I am not longer… in possession of the skills or the heart I need. I will never be Elite."

"Tak –" Dib started.  
>"Silence, child. I know it's true. I know how far I have fallen."<p> 


	10. Collective Memory

Dib fell asleep in the chair where he sat, and jolted awake as a number of medical agents entered, clipboards in hand. Tak was just barely awake, but allowed them to prick her arms and run her over with X-ray wands. A nurse explained that she had already gone through an MRI and a CAT scan, but she would have to be moved again for something they were planning.

"And what is that?" Dib asked.  
>"We doubt the public would let us, but as of right now, the collective memory is being wiped," she clucked.<br>"The collective memory?"  
>The nurse started explaining it as if he was three. "We do have access to the supernatural here, Agent. The evidence is being destroyed by other means, like video and photos. But our other branches are making everyone forget they ever saw this thing," she patted the bed, indicating that Tak was the <em>thing<em>.  
>"And why is this required?" Dib felt a chill run down his spine.<br>"Because we aren't sure if the public will like what we're doing to their only legitimate alien," the woman said, and refused to say anymore.

Dib followed them as they led her down into a room that looked as if they were prepping for surgery. "No, no, no!" Dib said. "Is this some kind of autopsy? You're not cutting her up!" His voice rose to almost a shout, and a doctor placed his hand on his shoulder.  
>"My boy, this is a surgery of <em>sorts<em>, but I can assure you she won't be cut up."  
>Tak turned and beckoned Dib over with a hooked finger. "It's all right," she rasped, "I heard about it last night."<br>"What will they be doing?" Dib asked. "I have a right to know, seeing as I turned you in!"  
>Tak laughed as a mother does when her small child thinks they are being clever. "I don't want them to do it, child. I really wish that they wouldn't." A sudden look of panic crossed her face, as if she had realized for the first time what was to be done to her. "Help me," she rasped, almost inaudibly.<p>

A nurse took Dib by the arm and led him out. "You can come by in a few hours, Agent, but you have no place here now."  
>As he was shoved out, Tak's voice rose to a scream. "<em>Help me! My people have left me, and you have as well!<em>"

Dib sat in Tak's unoccupied room for three hours. A nurse came in around the second hour and briefly explained what was happening. "Our specimen is very weak, you see, and we figured it a waste for it to die. What we're doing is implanting it with proteins and such, things that we have inside of us. We're making it immune to anything that may go wrong, so that its altered body chemistry allows it to survive our treatment better." She gave a sweet smile. "However, we do need it alive, that's for sure. Its kind, it sounds just fascinating, and we want to know about life outside this little planet of ours."  
>"I don't think her kind is something you really want to know about," Dib murmured truthfully.<br>"Oh, but its body is simply something of the likes of which we've never seen!" The nurse's hands flew into the air. "It's almost half robot, really. Fascinating, fascinating." She shook her head and smiled. "Really, it doesn't even appear to have reproductive organs. Fancy that, will you! Just one big super-organ and a heart!" Her eyes shone with the passion scientists and doctors get when given a hint of something new and different. "Yes, we'll pry the information we need from it and continue with our experiment."  
>"Experiment?" Dib echoed.<br>"Oh, nothing. But I will have to ask that you leave the Network for at least the next 14 days. You got us this creature, but we have the most rights over it now. Now leave us to what we do best, hmm?


	11. Catatonic

Two weeks passed. Two weeks of passing through daily life as if he were watching from above. Dib found that the Network had indeed wiped the knowledge of everyone that anything had ever happened, although he was spared, of course. He was greatly disturbed by the fact that such a fuss had been completely forgotten. Dib figured it was for the best. Even his school week was dreary, at least with his eccentric "foreign" classmate gone. The night he had gone home, the space between Zim's neighbors was empty once more. All that remained was a great mess of dirt and a single rubber pig buried in the mud. The sight had humbled him greatly, as if a chapter of his life had finally come to a close.

The day that marked his two week absence from the Network, Dib hot heeled it to their headquarters and took the elevator to the hall of cells. Every one was empty, all except for one. It was white and empty as ever, save for an equally white table and two chairs on either side. Inside sat Tak, looking considerably less pale, but still looking miserable. She was draped in what looked like a loose white tunic, and her antennae hung languidly to her shoulders. Tak appeared to be completely frozen. She stared at the table as if it were endlessly fascinating.

Dib flinched as a doctor came up behind him. "It's been a rough two weeks here. It won't eat anything we give it, it barely drinks, and when it does it spits most of it back up. It also won't talk to anyone. It's practically a zombie. Only our implants are keeping it able to function. We thought it would die a week back, we almost had to call you."  
>"Why is she locked up?" Dib asked, unable to look away from Tak. She looked like a mental patient. Locked away, the key swallowed.<br>"It's strong enough to leave the ER. So we moved it where we move everyone." He gesticulated to the cells.  
>"And yet she's the only one," Dib sighed.<br>"Listen, maybe it'll talk to you. We're trying to learn about its planet, maybe see if there are more of it here. Can you coax some words out, maybe?" Dib sighed.  
>"I can try. But it would help if maybe you <em>asked <em>her what her kind even eats, or gave her something to do so that she doesn't go crazy staring at the walls all damn day," Dib snapped. The doctor stared at him for a second and went to fetch the others. He swiped a card in the slot and the door slid open. Tak snapped to attention as he walked in.

He thought she looked healthier overall, although it was hard to determine. Although her skin had darkened a few shades, her eyes still had bags under them. Her eyes had an ambitious but horribly sad look in them, and paired with the sagging antennae, she looked ready to die from a broken heart. She was thinner, but in a way that didn't quite look like she was starving. Her lips were still dry.

"They told me you won't talk." Dib sat down tentatively in the seat opposite Tak. "Or eat, for that matter. That isn't very wise." Tak eyed him as if he were a student she had graduated with but whom she no longer quite recognized. "Are you starving yourself on purpose, or is the food that bad?"  
>Silence.<br>"I know you haven't spoken in two weeks, but really Tak, I'm not trying to hurt you." Tak's eyes narrowed, almost saying _Liar_! With a snap, Dib remembered.  
>"You're angry with me for leaving you in the OR."<br>Silence, and Tak's stony stare.  
>"They told me to leave. I couldn't come back. I swear it's true."<br>Silence.  
>"Look, why do you even care? You wanted to kill me when I first met up with you. You should be happy I was gone for so long. <em>Why won't you speak<em>?"

Tak leaned forward, and the fabric of her tunic rustled. Looking out, Dib could see that the doctors could see in, but he could not see past the window. He imagined them on edge as Tak drew closer.  
>Her voice was almost too soft to hear, as it had gone so unused. "They are stripping away all that is mine."<br>"Now we're getting somewhere. Care to elaborate?"  
>"My ship, my base, my robot, and now my identity. It is all gone. Out of reach." Tak drummed on the table with her talon-like fingers. "But now they are chipping away parts of me. Like chiseling rock off the mountain. My blood, my flesh. They think they own it." Tak coughed and paused to catch her breath. "But now they want me to tell them about my kind. My memories and my knowledge. All that I am under my skin." She grabbed the front of Dib's coat and drew him close enough so that she could hiss in his ear, "<em>I know you know the secrets of the PAK. You have to by now. Don't let them know how crucial it is. Don't tell them<em>!" She let go and Dib scooted back. "My memories of my species are all that belong to me now." Something passed over her, and Tak was back in a catatonic state. Dib cursed and stood to leave.

"Amazing! You got it to speak again!" A nurse exclaimed, scrawling on a clipboard. Something in Dib snapped.  
>"First of, your <em>specimen <em>is a _she_, not an _it_. And maybe she would talk if you didn't lock her up like a psych ward patient!" The agents were stunned into silence. "I found her for you, and I want my requests honored. I want the conditions in that cell improved by tomorrow." And with that, he turned and left.

Dib would never be as friendly with Tak as he was when she had made her debut on Valentine's Day, he was sure of that, but he felt a certain obligation to the frail bird in the trap. He hoped that by the next day, she wouldn't look ready to wither and die.


	12. Stranded

It was becoming a regular pattern. Let the doctors jostle her around, chip off bits of skin and blood, lift up her eyelids and shine all sorts of light into them. Tak bore it with bitter indifference. She let them get what they wanted out of her, simply because she knew she could not save herself. Her PAK was practically useless, and she had no ship, no robot. She felt stranded in the middle of the ocean, with no ship in sight.

There was one thing she would not relent to them, however. They coaxed her to speak to them, to answer their highly personal and condescending questions. "Where are you from?" They would ask in slow, loud voices. It was although they thought she couldn't hear them. "What is your species called?" "Why are you here?" She stared at them in eerie silence until eventually they became angry and quit for the day. Tak poked and prodded at the food they gave her, although most of it made her feel sick. It satisfied her to know she was frustrating and distressing them so.

The child came every day after school and stayed for hours. It was hard to tell if he was feeling any regret, or if he just wanted to rub in the fact that he taken her down so far. Whatever he had told them, they had obeyed him. After he left, they began filling the room with things they thought would encourage her to express herself. At first Tak thought it was childish, although the exasperating boredom made her give in. On the boy's second visit, she had a canvas on her lap, splotches of paint streaked on her face.

"I see you're not frozen in time anymore," he joked, sitting across from her on the floor. Tak didn't look up. The canvas had been covered in black, and she was painting a large, ringed, blue-green planet amongst a collection of moons, suns, and stars. She was busy adding streaks of the faintest white to its atmosphere. "Is this your planet?" Dib asked. The agents were outside, and he hoped they were tuning in.  
>Tak nodded distractedly.<br>"So this is Irk." Dib said, looking at it upside-down. "It's… pretty."  
>Tak looked up and stared at him. "I'd prefer if you kept it down."<br>"Tak, they'll find out eventually."  
>"Not if I can help it." She dunked a brush violently in a cup of water and started smudging the pinpricks of light among the black, giving them an effect of glowing.<br>"You're being awfully stubborn." Dib said after a moment. Tak merely nodded again. "You look healthier, though."  
>She put down her work and lifted her arms, turning the forearms for him to see. The skin was scarred and flaking, splotched in different shades of green from chippings and from where tubes and needles had entered. "Yes, I suppose I do," she said faintly before resuming work.<br>"It's not like I wanted them to," Dib protested.  
>Tak turned rigid. She set down everything and stood to a low crouching position. Mouth set in a snarl, she snatched up his collar and drew him up uncomfortably. Dib gasped at the look of rage and blame on her face. "Then what, pray tell, did you want from all this? Did you think they'd stop by, have me sign a form saying 'Oh yes, I'm an alien!' and let me on my way? Did you honestly expect I wouldn't end up where I am?" The door opened slightly and Tak threw Dib back to the floor.<br>"Do you want us to tranquilize it?" asked an agent. Dib shook his head slightly, but Tak was already back in her original position, legs folded with canvas atop. Dib felt a pang of annoyance at her moodiness, but figured she was entitled to feeling a bit emotional about her incarceration. She swung from begging for help to totally ignoring him to uncontrollable rage and back again, and it frightened him.

She had moved onto a new part of the painting, making fine curved lines with a dark magenta. After a moment of watching and waiting for his heart to slow, Dib became aware that the lines formed the outline of a huge vessel. The Massive.

He slowly got up and left her to her anger.


	13. The Sun Never Sets

The day after her outburst, Tak seemed to have ridden herself of her anger. Or at least she was good at hiding it. Three days went by of her being fairly civil with Dib, although she was still blunt and quiet. Dib found that these visits were becoming a huge part of his schedule. He hitched a ride on the bus to the Network right after school, sometimes staying until late in the night. It took a blow to his amount of sleep, but he felt he had a duty. He doubted that his father was home enough to care, and he was sure that his sister loved having the house to herself. And no matter how cold Tak seemed, she always appeared just a bit crestfallen when he left.

As he suspected she would, Tak had lightened up about her policy of not talking about her people. It happened when she had finished her painting, which showed the imperious Massive drifting by its impressive home planet. The insignia of the Irken Armada blazed like a warning, and the ships around it made it look like a general leading his troops to war. It was beautiful, but chilled him at the same time. Because Tak never truly slept, she had finished it by the time he came back. Dib eased into the subject as he looked at the finished product.  
>"Irk must be an impressive place," he said.<br>Tak nodded as though in a dream. "Few of us are there for much time at once. We all spend one of your decades underground though. Like incubating an egg, really."  
>"Where do you go, then?"<br>Tak laughed. Her voice was getting progressively raspier. "I forget, you humans are penned up like sheep in a farm. Our Empire stretches across the galaxy. We have whole planets used for a single purpose. To use one of your terms, _the sun never sets on the Irken Empire_." Dib smirked at the analogy.  
>"How many species are out there?"<br>She sighed and tilted her head back and forth as though calculating. "A lot. Just… a lot. You hacked into his computers with my ship though, didn't you?" She stared at him, and Dib knew who she meant by _him_. "You must be aware of a few."  
>Dib made an indifferent motion with his hand. "A few, yes. Like Vortians."<br>"Ahh, yes. The Vortians. A bit of a shame we conquered them, what with the rebellions being staged now. The Tallest have a lot on their hands now, too much to deal with one captured drone." Her smile faded.  
>"I never understood that. Why are you ruled by the tallest of your kind?"<br>Tak looked vaguely offended. "We are stuck in this state because of the highest powers of our kind. We grow because we are allowed to. Take myself for an example. I am older than any human, and yet I'm not much smaller than you."  
>"So it's like a reward, to be tall?"<br>Tak shrugged. "I've haven't been to a coronation in a while. But that's part of the knowledge we're downloaded with upon birth. So to answer your question, yes."  
>"And the conquering? How did that start?" Dib decided to press his luck while she was feeling talkative.<br>Now Tak leaned back as an adult does when preparing to explain a subject to a small child. "It started a few decades ago, which is recent for us. Our year is longer than yours. Anyhow, the Tallest was killed and she was replaced. He didn't rule much longer, in fact, he was killed the same way as his predecessor. He had an ego as big as his fancy new ship. He thought of us as a superior race, destined to reign in the stinking species of the universe and teach them servitude." She looked back at Dib. "We couldn't reject the idea, and the Control Brains let him do it. We obeyed, and the two Tallest now… well, they're not as zealous, but the conquering has stepped up in their time."  
>"We've had rulers like that."<br>"Have you?"  
>"Yes, and history doesn't look too kindly on them."<br>Tak laughed. "We've reached the point of no return, child. We continue conquering or the rebels wipe us all out. At this point, the former seems most likely."  
>"What happens if the rebels win?"<br>A serious look crossed Tak's face. "That won't happen."  
>"How do you know, though? There could be genocide happening right now, and you have no way of knowing."<br>Tak resumed her old, rigid glare, and Dib regretted the words. "Genocide happens in the Irken Empire as commonly as anything else. And it's not the Irkens being killed. We are too many. We are a legion, and the rebels barely have an army."  
>"I'm sorry."<br>"The thing is is that no, you aren't. You hate my people. If you could, I bet you would fly out and blow us all out of the sky yourself. Is that what you wanted my ship for?" She cocked her head to the side, and Dib was surprised she had remembered their first conversation, which seemed so long ago.  
>"I guess this conversation is over, then."<br>"I suppose it is."

As Dib was leaving, Tak let out a great wretching cough, and he turned to look. For a moment, she looked sicklier than she had when he saw her first. Droplets of blood smeared her arm where she had contained the cough. He was almost out the door when Tak called after him once more.  
>"It wasn't personal, you know. The last time I was here. It was just business."<br>An agent approached him upon leaving and took his arm angrily. "Why didn't you tell us what you knew? We've had to depend on it for all our answers, Agent Mothman. We can't go near the base, and the ship can barely be contained. It won't let us in or near it, and the base has had to be roped off. The fact is, Agent, that we need all the information we can get, and you have withdrawn it from us."  
>Dib brushed it off coolly. "She's talking, isn't she?" He yanked his arm away and turned to go home.<p>

Leaving, he could here the agent talking with a nurse in blue scrubs. "Bump the date up to tomorrow."


	14. Stained with Blood

It was the weekend, and Dib awoke to soft yellow light filtering in through the window. It took a moment before he remembered the "date" that the agent at the Network had mentioned. Leaping out of bed, he threw his clothes on and rushed to get to the headquarters.

By this time, Dib was able to easily get to her holding cell without having to present much identification. Turning Tak in had given him a large increase in credibility, and he got a few nods from older Agents going down. As the elevator opened, Dib saw that the agents on this floor were clearly working on something important. He was peeved that they were doing something like this without his authorization, but as the nurse had explained, he had lost most rights over the issue.

As he walked past the holding cells, he noticed that Tak's – now cluttered with scrawling and paintings she had done—was unoccupied. Pushing his way through the attendants, he made his way to the OR. A great commotion was coming from within, and he fought his way in.

There was a great crowd of doctors in the center, wrapped around the operating table in the middle. He could hear Tak screaming as she had done when she was brought in. She sounded exhausted, screaming and panting alternately. Dib stood on tiptoe to see what they were seeing and failed. Looking around, he saw a table with a blue tray sitting on it. It looked like it had tools in it, but upon closer inspection, it had something much different inside.

Dib's stomach dropped.

There was a pair of long, flaking antennae sitting in the tray, looking as if they had rotted off.

Dib pushed aside a nurse, who squawked, to see. Tak lay writhing on the table, draped thinly in a papery blue cover. Without her antennae, she looked like an uncrowned queen. She shone with sweat, and in her dark purple eyes was a look of horrible pain. Looking off to the side, Dib saw that her PAK lay on another table, the metal stained with bright green blood. He felt frantic.  
>"Stop it! Stop, she can't live without that thing on her back! Put it back on, or she'll die!"<br>A doctor looked at him as though he were a fool. "If this works, she won't need it anymore."  
>Dib felt cold. "What are you doing to her?"<br>Tak seemed unaware that anyone was near her. Most likely she had become deaf. She twisted and turned under the crinkling cover, kicking out at random. Her chest rose and fell as if her heart was about to burst. "We've been prepping her for this for a while," explained a nurse.  
>"You're torturing her," whispered Dib.<p>

Tak's screaming trickled to a groan and ended with a gasp. Her body convulsed and formed a rigid arch, and as her back lifted up Dib saw that the table was soaked in her blood. All at once, she fell once more to the table, still.

Silence.

One of the doctors was the first to speak. "Let's get her shot up with the new DNA." Everyone seemed frozen, and after a moment a handful of nurses got out long needles and shot her up. Tak lay still, panting heavily in her unconscious state. It seemed she spent a lot of time fainted at the Network.

"What have you done?" Dib rasped. His throat felt dry with the horror he had witnessed. It was worse than any scene he had seen in a movie. This was real, and so was the victim. Tak didn't resist as her arms and legs had the sharp needles dug into them. A nurse led a thin clear tube down her throat. She looked up at him, a serious look on her face. It seemed that even though they had planned this, they had all been profoundly affected by her outburst.

"We're going to have to ask you to leave."

And Dib was pushed out for the second time.


	15. Handyman

Dib didn't know what to do with himself after what he had seen. He had brought this upon her, and it seemed likely that she would die. He had no idea what was happening, and it seemed that the Tak he had previously known was gone. Dib felt sick at the magnitude of what he had done.

He hung around for a while longer before an agitated agent led him from the building. "Come back tomorrow," he said brusquely before throwing him out. Dib stood on the sidewalk for a long time, unsure where to go.

It was still early afternoon, and the sky was beginning its transition to red. After a moment, Dib decided to go to the first place he thought of.

The bus let him off near the park, and Dib soon encountered three agents circled around what looked like a cottage. The trees around it were roped off, and every time an agent neared it, a metal tentacles emerged from the roof and lashed out at the offender. Dib lifted up his card, and the agents welcomed him to the scene.

"It's certainly putting up a fight," one of them sighed. She looked tired. "We've been having shifts trying to break in. Whatever's inside is going to take work to access."  
>The ship had been cleared from the grounds, and only the camouflaged house remained. It looked shy and small among the trees compared to the massive base Tak had had previously.<p>

"Let me try," Dib said, ducking under the tape.  
>"I wouldn't do that!" The woman warned. Dib ignored her.<p>

Approaching the house, a metallic, pointed tentacles lashed out from the top of the roof. Having had experience with Zim's various defense systems, Dib lunged to the side and rolled out of the way of a second tentacle. Being smaller than the other agents, he was able to leap out of the way of a third and a fourth. Dib ran to the door and threw himself at it. The agents stood slack-jawed as Dib fell into the dimly lit front room.

It was darker and considerable smaller than Zim's home, hanging with black pipes and having no conventional decoration. Dib opened a door that exposed an elevator, and he stepped inside.

The elevator groaned and took him down the levels. Like Zim's elevator, it was transparent and showed various computers and tubes. Unlike his preferred magenta, Tak's temporary base was grey and purple, not unlike her last one. Stagnant computer screens sat with her personal insignia displayed on them, waiting for their master to come back.

The elevator stopped at the base level. A few computers sat with their screens off, and the floor felt more solid, as the only thing below was dirt and rock. It was more cramped than Zim's base, and Dib was reminded that Tak had not planned to stay for very long, which brought on a fresh wave of regret.

In the center sat a single button encased in a glass box. Approaching it, Dib made out the words "Press to fold" in Irken. Due to the onboard computer in her ship, Dib was able to translate simple sentences.  
>"Press to fold?" Dib echoed. He flipped the glass open and gave in to the impulse to press the button. At once, a groaning sound resounded through the base.<p>

Dib panicked, fleeing for the elevator. It brought him up to the ground level, and he flew from the house. The three agents stood inside the tape now, looking disconcerted.

"Watch out!" Dib cried.

Before them, they saw the walls of the house fold in on themselves like a stack of card. The ground quivered as the underground levels followed suit and rose to meet the ground floor. Folding almost impossibly far, the entire base curled up and clicked to form a silver capsule in the middle of an expanse of dirt.

Dib wondered if Zim went through this as he uprooted his base. He bent and picked it up, expecting to find it heavy and finding it light as air. He handed it to a man with a black goatee, who picked it up with a murmured "Incredible!"  
>"This could revolutionize how we build our own homes!" Exclaimed the woman.<p>

"Uh huh. It's great all right." Dib sighed and looked back at the ruined terrain behind them. "That's one thing down. Can I see the ship?"

The two male agents looked at each other. "I suppose so. You've done amazing repairs on it from what we can tell. Of course, it won't really let us near it," the female agent explained. "The creature seemed to have downloaded its personality into it somehow… quite incredible really. Anyhow, all it does is insult and attack anyone who comes near it."  
>Dib couldn't help but smiling as he remembered the standoffs he had had with the ship while trying to repair it. "I can try to fix it again," he suggested. All three agents shrugged, and pocketing the capsule, they led him to their car.<p>

The garage they kept the ship in was through another entrance, and Dib successfully avoided the agents who had thrown him out before. Walking through the hallways that echoed with the sound of machinery, he found himself plagued with what he had seen just before. Surely with her PAK torn off, Tak was dead by now? But if she was, the agents would have been informed. He would know, wouldn't he? The woman swiped a card, and a garage door slid up.

In the center of the room was Tak's dark red vessel, which was currently threatening to chop the legs off of anyone who came near it. Its hooked tentacles lashed out and nearly beheaded one of the agents. The ship was still dented and chipped in places, and he guessed Tak didn't have much time to fix the rest of it up.

Dib approached the ship tentatively. On multiple occasions, Tak's ship had knocked the air out of him, thrown him across the yard, and scratched him up. The ship turned as if analyzing him and lifted a mechanical arm to smash him like a bug. Feeling lucky after his encounter with her base, Dib threw himself out of the way. "Get away!" the ship snarled in its master's voice.

Dib backed up and scampered backwards as it pulled itself towards him. Crouching, Dib waited for it to attack again. As the tentacle swung itself at him again, he threw himself at it and clung to the metal. The ship, confused, grunted and swung the arm around. Dangling above the top of the ship, Dib dropped to the surface of the ship and forced open the cockpit. Once inside, he shut it off. The legs fell motionless to the concrete floor. The lights faded off.

"This has really been your lucky day, hasn't it Agent Mothman?" one of the men asked with his hands on his hips.  
>"I guess so," Dib panted. He climbed out and looked around the garage. Odds and ends hung from the ceiling, blinking lights and rusty panels. "Is there anything else?"<br>"Well, there's the robot. It seems pretty dead. We don't have the material to fix it up." The woman gestured to a cardboard box against the wall. Dib walked over it and saw Tak's little robot lying inside. It looked fragile and rather sad, twisted in an awkward position. Dib lifted it up to look at the gaping hole in its head. He received a static shock as a loose circuit surprised him. "Could I take this home?" he asked. If Tak lived to see the morning, maybe he could make her less angry if he gave her back her companion.  
>"If you can fix it, be our guest," one of the men sighed.<p>

Dib nodded and thanked the agents before tucking the robot under his arm and leaving again.


	16. Newborn

He was almost afraid to return to the Network the next day. Dib woke up with the sound of Tak's screams echoing in his mind. He had received no news from them during the night, which he took as a good sign. Dib clung to the hope that had anything happened to her, he would be told. Getting dressed, he noticed MiMi lying in the corner of his room where he had left her. Her red eyes had gone dead and grey, and he almost pitied it. He would work on it as soon as he could, and it would be good as new.

The atmosphere was different in Tak's ward when he arrived. There was an air of excitement, although no one seemed to be speaking. Dib thought the agents here seemed – satisfied? No one pushed him out, so he progressed to her hospital room when he saw that she was not in her cell. He felt certain she was still alive.

Dib pushed the door open and saw a sight he had not expected. A single nurse stood in the room scrawling on a clipboard, and she glanced up when he walked in. "Who is that, exactly?" Dib asked, pointing at the girl lying in the bed. The nurse laughed.  
>"You don't recognize it?" She hung the clipboard up at the end of the bed and left him alone with the girl.<p>

It took a moment for the gravity of it to hit him. "Hello, child," the girl rasped in a ragged whisper. In a lot of ways, she resembled a newborn. She was deathly pale, almost stark white. Her tired light purple eyes had heavy bags under them. Her hair was short and blue, and looked as if someone had brusquely taken her head and sliced off her hair, which may have been the case. "They thought it would be cute to make me look like my old disguise." She laughed, which transformed into a cough.  
>"Tak…?" Dib asked, horrified.<br>"Who else would I be?" Tak asked. Brushing her hair aside, he saw the small black dot under her eye that had been there when she appeared a year before.  
>"What did they do to you?" Tak sighed, and a look of utter misery passed over her face. She seemed resigned to her fate.<br>"I applaud you for joining an organization with such poor reasoning in their decisions. They've taken me and changed me. Made me like one of you."  
>"What you're saying is… they've made you human."<br>Tak's eyes snapped open, and once again she entered one of her stubborn, angry moods. "No. Never. I was born an Irken, and I shall always be one."  
>"It doesn't look like it to me." Dib said. He sat down slowly beside her bed. She looked a mess, hair disheveled and skin looking bruised in places.<br>"I keep hoping that this is a joke. That this…" she gestured to her new body, "… is just some sort of suit. I try to look for something similar within me… but there is nothing. Even my insides are different, totally alien. I feel so uncomfortable. I feel completely off." Tak sank back.  
>Dib was finding it difficult to understand the situation. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't authorize it. Why did they do it?"<br>Tak cackled cynically. "They have all the samples they could possibly want from me. They want nothing more. You haven't been around for the worst of it. They've made me run mazes, made me run until I puke. Gave me tests to test my intelligence. It's like I'm a laboratory mouse. It's like they think I'm an idiot."  
>"No wonder you've looked so bad when I arrive," Dib murmured. Tak nodded slowly.<br>"They think that by doing this, they're isolating me from the Empire. That they won't want me back even if I leave, and that this is my last resort. They're making me depend on them, and they're making me stay. These imbeciles think I'll open up if I'm one of them," she spat.  
>"I don't understand. The PAK – how are you surviving without it? Doesn't it have all your memories? Your personality?"<br>Tak smiled. "Clever child. They've been preparing me for this. The more injections I got, the less I depended on the PAK. It was like everything in it that defined me was slowly leaking into my brain where it belonged. It was a husk by the time you showed up, what with the weapons disabled. However, they kept my genetic code in it. If I could _just _get my PAK back, it would override everything. But it would hurt. You saw that for yourself."  
>"I'm sorry. I couldn't do anything."<br>"Very right. I wouldn't have expected you to do anything."  
>"I took care of your base. It's packed up and everything. Out of sight."<br>"Thank you," Tak rasped. She coughed again.  
>"How did this happen in one day?" He asked, still bewildered.<br>"Oh, I'm not done cooking. It hurts, what's going on. But only they shoot me up with enough of their gunk, I'll be like them, in body anyhow." She frowned.  
>"How does it feel? Being human 'in body'?" asked Dib. Tak stared across the room as if deep in thought. "I have all my memories. I remember everything, and I remember every emotion I had." She turned and looked straight at him, almost through him. "It hurts. And I'm sad. Incredibly sad."<p>

A doctor walked in and shone a few lights in her eyes. "Excuse me, sir?" Dib asked shyly. "Is she going to be purely human by the time everything is done?"  
>The man sighed and played with his pen. "Well, there'll be some differences. Her hair will probably grow very slowly, seeing as her kind seems to be hairless. She'll never be able to reproduce. She may have problems with her lungs and heart later on. We have no way of knowing." He left once more.<br>"They're not calling you 'it' anymore," Dib observed.  
>"Some of them still do. I think you swayed some of them," Tak shrugged weakly and smiled.<br>"Is their theory right? Are you going to accept staying here?"  
>Tak became serious again. "They mentioned moving me to an apartment in the country after a few months. They'll keep me there with some of the other specimens they have. They like to keep people like me out of the public eye." Dib nodded. Tak went on.<br>"I'll never be one of you, child. I'll never be… human. They shot me up with needles, so what? They haven't changed who I really am. I never wanted this to happen to me. A hundred years ago I was born on Irk, and raised as an Irken. That will never change. I will _always _be superior."  
>"And you'll never change your mind?"<br>Tak shook her head slightly. "I wasn't created just for the fun of it. Irkens aren't like you. I wasn't made by two random Irkens. I was made by the Empire. I owe everything I am to it. I am its child and its servant."

She leaned back and let out a heavy groan. She looked utterly exhausted, as if she had not slept in days, which was the case for her. A small, almost invisible spark of fear crossed her face. Tak turned to Dib. "Something is wrong."  
>Dib was faintly alarmed. "What?"<br>Tak sat up, mouth hanging open as though trying to pinpoint the problem. "I feel like I'm shutting down."  
>Now she had gotten Dib's attention. "Shutting down? Like, dying?"<br>"No… no…." Tak seemed to search for her words. "Like an Irken when its PAK powers down. My eyes are burning," she rubbed at them furiously.

Dib raised an eyebrow. "I think you're just falling asleep."  
>Tak looked at him as if he were insane. "Irkens don't sleep."<br>"You're not Irken anymore."  
>She became rigid with fear, seizing the thin white covers in her frail fingers. "No, no, no, this isn't normal. It isn't right. I'll be vulnerable. They could kill me!" She looked at Dib with such panic that he seemed to feel it himself.<p>

"It's not that bad. And if you don't sleep you'll die anyhow." Dib had never met anyone who was actually phobic of falling asleep. And yet here Tak was, blubbering over the fact that some species actually had to sleep.

A nurse walked in to check a few IVs. "Is there a problem?" she asked, seeing Tak shrink away from her as though they were all assassins, bent in an evil plot to kill her in her sleep.  
>"You may want to give her a sedative. She's very tired, you see, but she refuses to sleep," Dib sighed. Tak shot him a look that said <em>You dirty traitor! <em>She tried to pull her arm away as the nurse dug yet another needle into her skin. Within seconds, she had fallen back against the pillow, a dazed look on her face.

"Am I going to die?" Tak slurred a bit as her almost bruised-looking eyelids began to droop.  
>"No." answered Dib, keeping his arms to his sides. "You'll be fine."<p>

A final look of apprehension shone in her eyes before she gave in to the medication. Closing her eyes, she murmured, "They look my robot, child. They took her and they won't give her back."

Feeling a bit uncomfortable, Dib decided it was time for him to leave.

As the door swung silently shut behind him, he could catch Tak frantically murmuring words like "Devastis" over and over in her sleep.


	17. Ghost

It disturbed Dib greatly, the fact that Tak had undergone arduous experimentation in the hours that he spent away from the Network. It angered him even more that the doctors had felt no need to inform him of any of it. He imagined Tak as helpless and lost as a lab rat, scurrying through an endless maze for no real goal. There was no way that he could really stop them from doing any of it, and Dib didn't see the point in trying.

When Dib arrived the next afternoon, Tak looked a fraction healthier. He was fairly impressed with how quickly the events here were snowballing; he guessed it may have been the Network's heavy mingling in the supernatural, a subject he was still not completely learned in. Tak was back in her cell fiddling with a Rubik's cube that appeared to be made up of hundreds of complex squares. She had been upgraded from the loose tunic she wore last time; now she wore what looked like a long grey sweater that reached to her knees and bunched up where she had pushed the sleeves to her elbows.

She looked up when he came in, fingers still flying as she twisted the cube to and fro. Dib sat across from her. Her messy dark blue hair shielded part of her face, and she shook it out of the way. "I don't know how you people deal with all this flagella. It's so obstructing. I wish those men had just sheared it all off."  
>"Still adjusting?" asked Dib. He couldn't help but smile a bit at her frustration.<br>"I feel completely deaf and blind. My vision is terrible. I can't hear half as well as I used to without my antennae. My back—" she grimaced and made a disgusted sound "It feels so _light_, I keep reaching back and expecting my PAK to be there. And when it's not I panic." She let out an irritated gust of air and flipped the Rubik's cube around, a series of clicks coming from it.  
>"Is that another intelligence test?" Dib asked, nodding at it.<br>"What?" Tak asked distractedly. "Oh. This. Partly. I think they're just trying to keep me occupied by now." She leaned forward like a small girl telling her best friend a secret. "You know what I've been thinking? Slavery is illegal here, isn't it? Kidnapping? What strange practices! Anyhow, I'm human now, aren't I?"  
>"In body."<br>"In body, yes, of course." Tak swatted the air. "What I'm getting at is – aren't they holding me hostage? Keeping me against my will and performing all sorts of horrible horror movie tests?" She leaned back again and waited for Dib to reply.  
>He had never thought of it that way before. Tak was no longer an alien in the eyes of the law, and the Network was doing things to her that were only done on animals. And if the public didn't know about her anymore….<p>

"Get it?" Tak said, smirking. With a final cracking sound, she snapped the Rubik's cube into its correct pattern.  
>"I don't know if that would work…." Dib said doubtfully.<br>"Isn't it worth a try?"

A series of ideas flickered through Dib's mind. Could the Network be reported for kidnapping? Yes, he supposed it was plausible. But what would happen once she was free? She had nowhere to go, unless she was given back her ship. "Oh, the Network planned this well," Dib said out loud. "Even if you get out, you'll have no one to turn to. The Irkens would reject you unless your PAK was returned to you. And how would be even get it back?" Tak shrugged. "I don't think it would work," he said finally.  
>"It seemed like a good idea at the time. You can't blame me for wanting to get out of this hellhole," she huffed, twisting the cube agitatedly.<p>

Tak got an irritated look in her eye that Dib recognized as the precursor to her moody, silent streaks. "This would be so much simpler if I had my robot." She gasped, and dropping the cube, her hands flew to her eyes.  
>"What is it?" Dib asked, alarmed.<br>"Nothing," Tak blurted out. She drew her hands away and examined them. The backs of them were damp, and her eyes looked faintly red.  
>"Are you… are you crying?"<br>"No. Of course I'm not." She snuffled quietly and shook her hair back in front of her face. Dib sighed. He wasn't going to get anything more out of her.

"Before you go, child," Tak said quietly as he reached the door. "They're moving me to my apartment in a few days. They'll give you a card, I think."  
>Dib nodded and left. As he looked into the one-way window, he saw that the cube was still abandoned on the floor. Tak was wiping tears from her eyes.<p>

A nurse walked in as he left, and he paused to look through the window as she lifted Tak up from her perch. A doctor approached him and handed him a small white card for her new residence. "They're taking her to see how she functions now, since she should be fit enough to move around now," he explained, nodding towards her.

Whether it was because of how much time she spent bedridden or her new body chemistry, she stumbled awkwardly on her way across the room. She looked like a ghost, pale and weak and floating along, longing for a past life. Walking down the hall with her back turned, Dib saw dark, heavy scarring on her back from where the PAK was yanked off.

She didn't even turn back to say goodbye.


	18. Lost and Found

Dib thought about the significance of the robot as he examined it in his garage that night. It was small and frail, but he knew the damage it was capable of. He vividly remembered standing high atop Tak's base, Tak slinking around them like a shark circling a life boat. The little SIR had picked him up with its metal claw as if he were made of air, throwing him painfully down a jagged air vent.

Now it laid dead and obsolete, circuits and wires mangled in its head. He poked and prodded it with various tools, eventually scooping out the insides of the head and working on them outside of the metal shell. The technology was more advanced than much of what he had seen, even inventions of his father. He understood why the Eyeballs were having such problems with fixing it.

Tak had said that the robot was like her child. That was understandable, seeing as she had made the beast and was probably so lacking in maternal instinct that a cold, non-sentient robot was the closest thing to offspring she could relate to.

It was about one AM after hours of cursing, experimenting, tweaking, and repairing had gotten MiMi's head in order. Clicking the last wires into place, the robot's eyes flooded with a deep red as it came alive. Dib flinched and shot back as it lifted its head to look at him. It clicked unintelligibly and stood, poising its one giant arm to attack.

"Hold on, little guy… or girl… don't hurt me!" Dib rose his hands up as an act of surrender. MiMi seemed to consider him for a moment. "I know where your master is," he pressed on. Now the robot lowered its weapon an inch. He had struck a cord with the thing. "Just stay here for the night and I'll bring you to her. Okay?"

MiMi stood frozen for a moment, and Dib was afraid it would pursue its attack on him as it had done before, if it even recognized him, which it appeared it didn't. It seemed to shake its head a bit, as if aware that it had been severely broken before and was just now coming to its senses. Unlike Zim's sad excuse for a robot, MiMi seemed to have her wits about her.

After a second the robot lowered its arm and allowed Dib to guide it to his room. It curled up, suspicious, in the corner, and as Dib fell asleep its two red eyes bored into him from the dark.

Several days later, Dib set off to meet the agent that would take him to the new, low-key residence where Tak would be confined to. Without being informed, she had been moved the morning after Dib began work on MiMi, and they had refused to let him see her in order to have her moved in without delay. He couldn't help but feel increasingly irritated with what the Eyeballs were doing behind his back. Walking out to the shining black car bound to belong to the Network, Dib recognized the woman that had been present when he had broken into Tak's base.

The drive took about twenty minutes, leading them out of the suburbs and into the eerie isolation of the surrounding fields. The woman mumbled under her breath as she nearly lost the place in the tall stalks of corn that swayed in the morning wind.

The base took the form of an unassuming farmhouse, trees shielding it in shadow. Walking up, Dib saw a flicker in the window that could have been Tak or any of her mentioned roommates. A second later, he knew it was Tak when she came hurdling out the front door, bare feet throwing up clouds of dirt.

"Finally! It's so _boring _here!" Tak seemed energetic enough to walk without falling over, and the agent walked in through another entrance to check things within.

Her blue hair was disheveled, as if she was too frustrated by its existence to take care of it. She still wore the knee-length sweater, and she was still covered in bruises that she explained away as humans being less "durable" than Irkens. "I forget that I can't handle as much as I used to," she said when he drew attention to them, shrugging. Her new veins seemed to struggle against her sallow skin, giving her the look of having faint blue streaks of henna all over her. To Dib's surprise, she seemed to have truly accepted her fate.

The farmhouse was shared by what seemed to be a small Sasquatch male and a tall, mousy teenaged girl who was speckled with shimmering fish scales. They were both too shy to say anything, and Tak appeared to not care enough to introduce them. "They're so dull," Tak whispered to him. "Two years they've lived together and I don't even see them talk to each other." It was clear to see from the way they flinched away from her that Tak had asserted her dominance over the house within a few days. Light-years away from Irk, the Irkens were still making conquests.

Tak was babbling about the horrific boredom she experience in the house while shuffling through her room, which was covered in her paintings of ships and planets, when Dib cleared his throat. "I brought something here today. It's out in the car."  
>"Oh yeah?" Tak arched an eyebrow and looked out the window. Without waiting, she went down the stairs three at a time, making it to the car before Dib was out the door.<p>

Dib unlocked the door as Tak peered into the tinted windows. She was visibly antsy, and Dib guessed that sitting inside had made her incredibly bored. She stood a bit away from the car, explaining that if she went any further she would be shocked. Looking down as he opened the door, Dib noticed a flashing bracelet attached to Tak's thin ankle.

He got out the open cardboard box and pulled out MiMi, switching her on. As Tak laid her eyes on her robot, she became slack jawed with disbelief. "No way!" she shrieked. She snatched MiMi from Dib's arms and pulled her into a tight embrace. To his surprise, the robot appeared to purr with affection. It flashed briefly between its robot form and the form of a sleek black cat.

"Her holographic projector is busted," Tak clucked. "Not that she needs it." She looked at Dib with her cold, aloof Irken gratitude. "Thank you. For getting her back." She smiled haltingly.  
>Dib shrugged. "No problem. Really."<p>

MiMi hummed contentedly in her masters arms, unaware that they had been separated for that long at all.


	19. Stories of Glory

Tak seemed to open up tremendously over the next week. With MiMi sitting content on her lap, she spent hours at a time talking about everything and anything that was part of her past life as an Irken. Dib found the stories endlessly fascinating, and more informative than anything he had yanked from Zim's computers. She began drawing more and more pictures, from giant battleships to small and rather cute alien creatures.

She gave descriptions of the wonders of the Irken Empire; blue-green planets swathed in beautiful chains of islands, star systems that shimmered from purple to pink depending on the year, and planets with so many moons that they often collided during orbit. Tak was particularly proud of her time on Irk and her training to be part of the Elite. Although she tiptoed around her incident that landed her on Earth, she told stories of intergalactic battles, explosions that shook solar systems, and the sheer might of the Irkens. Dib still harbored contempt and mistrust for the race as a whole, but Tak was becoming more distant in her descriptions of them. As though she were watching from above. As though she had stopped counting herself among them.

They saw little of her roommates, and Tak didn't seem to be bothered by that. Apparently overpowered by her snappy personality, they spent more and more time outside during Dib's visits. He found himself imagining what it would be like on a battleship or on one of the exotic planets that Tak told of. Her eyes got a cloudy, dreamy look in them when she slipped into a story, and reality seemed to yank her back into dismal sadness. Her walls hung with detailed portraits of galaxies and stars, as if desperate to remember their glory.

Although Tak seemingly pretended to care about Dib's studies during her first visit, she appeared genuinely interested this time around. He brought along case files and photos he had taken, and she sifted through them often. Tak was more than a bit skeptical (Dib had a knack for telling who really believed him), but she tried to be polite about it for fear that he would leave her to the crushing boredom of the farmhouse. However, she did seem cheerier with her robot with her. He never saw them apart.

Tak, although she obviously tried to hide it, seemed to spend a lot of her time sleeping during the school hours prior to Dib stopping by the farmhouse. She had evidently lost her fear of the "human weakness", claiming that her most vivid memories came to her in dreams. Dib was unsure whether she thought of him as a friend, or a toy to distract her during the long hours of the day. She appeared to be making an effort to ditch her cold attitude, although considering her previous duplicity, it was hard to differentiate between friendliness and just being two-faced.

As days wore on, Tak became the polar opposite of the ragged and frail bird Dib had met in the hospital. She was back to her old self, ignoring that she had once tried to annihilate Dib's race. She cracked sarcastic jokes every now and then, letting out a shrill cackle and an elvish grin. She was more ambitious, although her bracelet confined the amount of places she was able to go. Instead of a bird caught in a deadly trap, Tak was more of a frantic dog in a much too small cage, hopping about and foaming at the mouth.

And yet, in the back of Dib's mind, she appeared discontent. Under every smile was an impatient snarl. Behind every twinkle of the eye was the spark of wit and anger. She had given up her previous plan for escape, but Dib couldn't help but expect another plot to crop up. Left to herself with a much lighter flow of agents going through, Tak was bound to come up with some sort of scheme.

"This place is so boring," Tak drawled for the hundredth time on a Sunday morning. She lay back on her messy and typically unmade bed, throwing a pen cap up in the air and catching it. MiMi watched with minimal interest as it made its alternate ascents and descents.  
>"Really? I didn't know."<br>Tak stuck her tongue out at him. "I mean, I seriously considered shaving my head yesterday out of boredom. I thought my eyes would fall out." She snorted the way she did before saying an inner thought or an idea. "Do you think it would make them mad if I shaved my head?"  
>"Maybe. I don't know." Dib was shifting through a particular case file.<br>"If I knew it would annoy them, I would," Tak sighed, rolling over on her stomach to look out the window. "Why is your sky like that?" she asked after a minute.

Dib looked out the window before returning to his papers. "I don't know, it's always been like that. I think it used to be a different color around fifty years ago."  
>"That's weird." Antsy, Tak grunted and rolled over again to lie on her side. "My sky is pink. Almost purple, really. It was really pretty in the morning." Her voice acquired its dreamy tone as she lapsed into her old memories.<br>"So you've told me."  
>"I should paint it," she murmured, more to herself than anyone. She dragged MiMi to her chest and stroked her cold, metallic body.<p>

"I've been thinking a lot. About my race."  
>"Yeah?" Dib rested his chin on his knees. Out of all the stories, he found the stories about the Irkens the most useful.<br>"You know how I said how the Empire creates us?"  
>"How you're all stitched together from pieces in the gene bank? Yeah, I think you've told me." Dib had cringed at that story. It made all Irkens seem like Frankenstein monsters.<br>"It's been that way for a while…." Tak seemed to drift off, and Dib was about to resume his work when she suddenly snapped.

"Maybe I'm better off this way, you know? Maybe it's better than being hooked up to that damned machine that we'd all die without!" Tak ran her hands frantically through her hair. When she did this, it looked like she was attempting to feel for her lost antennae. "It's been this way for so long that we can't even reproduce anymore! I mean, that isn't normal, is it? And no one realizes that they're practically half robot because all their damned thoughts are programmed!" Tak's cheeks flushed.  
>"Tak—" Dib started, uncomfortable with her outburst.<br>"How can we claim to be superior if we're all stuck? I mean, we'd die if we tried to live without the PAK. We've doomed future generations to this… this _horrible _fate where they can either die or live totally dependent on machines!" Suddenly, she burst out crying. She seemed ashamed of it, and buried her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sorrow. Dib sat awkwardly, unsure what to do.  
>Tak wiped at her inflamed eyes frantically and sniffled her next words. "Maybe I'm better on this ball of dirt that can barely be called a… a proper civilization than back home where everyone is so damned fascist." She tugged at the neckline of her shirt and bit back a sob.<br>"But you… you seemed to miss Irk a lot."  
>"Oh, yeah, sure. Of course I do. How can I not? When you leave home… no matter how many things are wrong with it, sometimes you'd go back in an instant." She swallowed and shook her hair in front of her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's these horrible human emotions. I'm being choked by all this unreasonable emotion that I wouldn't have need for anyhow. I'm speaking nonsense. Just… just forget it."<p>

Silence, save for the sound of a singing bird outside the window.

"Would you go back to being Irken?" Dib asked finally.  
>Tak sniffed and shrugged. "It's all I've ever known."<br>"You know this now, though."  
>"Some life I've had here," Tak snorted. "Being Irken has been… fine. And in twenty years I can be part of the military again. That's exciting, right? Yes… Yes, I would go back."<br>Dib expected her answer, but it still made his stomach drop.

There was a soft shuffling in the hall, probably from the muffled paws of the Sasquatch child. Tak rolled her eyes ostentatiously. "They're so dull. I know I've said it before, but they really are. You have no idea how badly I want to see another Irken. I'll go insane. I think I already have."  
>Dib nodded slowly, not watching. Due to her sudden explosion, Dib guessed she already <em>was <em>insane.

Tak sat up suddenly, startling the SIR. "Forget this place. I swear, I hate it. I _hate _it!" She ran her hands through her already scruffy hair. She seemed to be trying to forget about her earlier vent.  
>"What do you mean, forget it? They have you stuck here." Dib looked up finally, setting aside his work.<p>

She paced around the room, kicking papers and books that the agents sometimes brought up. She toed a copy of _The Canterbury Tales_, kicking it around as she went. "Not for long. They're sending me back to headquarters tomorrow. For a medical checkup."  
>"Oh yeah?"<br>"Did I stutter?" Tak's attitude was back, brought on by her fatigue. "That's where my stuff is, right? My ship and my PAK? Or did they move that without telling you, too?"  
>Dib frowned. "As far as I know, it's all still there."<p>

Tak smiled, just barely. "That's good. I wonder if they'll be mad if I bring MiMi. I bet they will. That'd be great." She cackled in her distinctive way. It made her look dangerous, especially with her face red from crying.

She had plopped back down on the floor when she said "Oh yes, I'm very done with this arrangement."

Dib gave her a doubtful look. Recognizing that he probably thought she was off her rocker, Tak covered another giggle with her mouth. "Just see, child." It was the first time she had called him that since being moved. "Just see what I have in store."


	20. Commotion

Tak remained true to her claim from Sunday. She was still at the farmhouse by the early afternoon when Dib showed up, but half an hour later a Network van pulled up on the dirt path. They had placed her in a long white shirt that crinkled and folded, and Tak played nervously with the sleeves. She lifted a foot contemptuously for the man to remove her ankle bracelet before being loaded into the back. Dib, however, was made to sit in the front. In the mirror he could see her slouching in her seat, arms folded and lip pouting. He couldn't help but smile.

She sat silently in the Network's clinic, allowing herself to be poked and prodded and measured. Indignation radiated off of her in waves. A nurse came in after twenty minutes and snipped away her shaggy hair, which Tak seemed to appreciate, although she certainly was not going to show it. She had had Dib tote MiMi along for fear she wouldn't be allowed to bring her in herself, and Dib sat in the back with the cold little robot sitting tensely on his leg.

When some of the doctors had left, Tak smiled impishly and gave Dib a discreet wink. He didn't understand what she was getting at, although it probably had something to do with her cryptic plans from Sunday. She constantly bit her lips and rocked back and forth on her heels, clearly anxious. It didn't even seem to bother her that she had returned to the embrace of her captors.

"I'll be back," a doctor said bluntly before leaving with a clipboard. Tak, Dib, and MiMi were left behind, and Tak quickly padded across the room on her bare feet.

As she had done during their first meeting in the cell, Tak leaned close to Dib to whisper something in his ear. She smelled strongly of antiseptic and a bit like the earthy-scented crops that surrounded the farmhouse. Her voice was like a snakes hiss. "I want you to go find my PAK," she whispered.  
>"What? You know it's under heavy guard!" Dib hissed.<br>"I don't care. They'll let you by. Knock some out if you have to. Just get back my PAK and don't ask questions!"

Tak was smaller and certainly frailer than Dib, and he could have easily pushed her away, but she carried the presence of an imperious old woman that everyone was made to respect. Dib stood up abruptly, and MiMi jumped to the ground. He gave her a last trepidatious look before leaving. She made an impatient hand wave that said _Get going!_ She looked as she did when she had what was probably a bad idea, eyebrows furrowed and mouth set.

Dib didn't know where to start. He trotted down the hall at a fast, nervous pace, the tail of his jacket flapping. He could turn back now, lie to her and say he couldn't get in. But she would see past the lie. He knew she would. Nothing good could come from stealing anything like this for who could be, as far as he knew, an enemy of Earth.

He reflected on the change he had seen in Tak over the past few weeks. How much of what she said and did could be trusted? She still pushed him around, that much was true. But if he didn't trust her, why was he still doing what she asked? Before he could stop and go back, Dib ran into a guard leaning on an electrical staff that looked like the imperial guards in Tak's stories.

"Can I help you?" The guard drawled. He couldn't have been over twenty, lean and scraggly with a bit of a crooked nose.  
>"The specimen in Ward 56, do you know where the original DNA is being kept? I understand it's being contained in the mechanism we got from its spine."<br>The boy shifted against his post. "Can I see your card?"  
>Dib withdrew it. "I'm the one who discovered the thing, after all," he growled. Maybe using the same language the rest of the agents did would get him to her PAK faster.<br>He squinted at the laminated slip and motioned for him to follow.

The guard took him down a sloping hallway, the lights getting fewer and more far between as they went. It grew eerily silent and uncomfortable, and Dib felt a bit stupid for letting Tak boss him around.

The guard stopped and leaned against his staff again at the end of the hallway, which led to a solid black door. "Well, here you are, sir," the boy said lazily. Dib shakily took out his card and swiped it through a slot on the wall. A panel opened up on the door, and he pressed his palm to it. The door let out a heavy groan like a dragon being awoken before sliding open.

At first, everything seemed dark. Dib walked in blinking, letting his eyes adjust. Slowly, painfully slowly, the lights turned on as if alerted by his motion. A single pillar stood in the middle of the room, and on a stand that propped it up sat Tak's PAK, glimmering as if freshly polished.

Dib reached out and stroked one of the dark purple side pods with a finger. No alarm went off. Encouraged, he took it in both hands. Dib was aware of what a PAK could do if it latched itself onto a new host, and he was not planning on painfully transforming into a carbon copy of Tak any time soon. Positioning it so that the back faced away from him, he tucked it on the inside of his jacket.

Dib left the room, nodding at the guard, before walking back to where Tak was being held. Halfway there, a great crash came from down the hall, and Dib stood shocked as a dark red ship went hurdling through the ward.


	21. Takeoff

Dib broke out in a run, the PAK's hard metal exterior thumping painfully against his side. Papers fell in the wake of agents who ducked or tripped getting out of the Spittle Runner's way. It went along blindly, slamming into corners before going to where it was meant to go, which Dib had an idea about.

Behind him he heard the sound of running feet, although he didn't dare look back. The ship took the same route he took, always hurdling just ahead. It swerved towards the direction of its master and he flew around the corner leading to Ward 56, blasting through the double doors and locking them, drawing the blinds in front of the glass. The ship sat, hovering and waiting, before its master.

Tak was tinkering with MiMi, snapping shut the lid of her head. She smiled sweetly at Dib. "Nice for you to show up. Have my PAK?"  
>"You're unbelievable," Dib grunted, throwing the PAK at her. She caught it in both hands and looked at it like a relic. "What have you done?"<br>"You did me a huge favor fixing MiMi. She's a remote control, you see."  
>"A <em>what<em>?"  
>"A remote control. For my Runner." She patted the side of the vessel.<br>"I can't believe this."

"_Open up, Agent Mothman! We're going to break down the door_!"

"We're so screwed, oh my god, we're so screwed…." Dib ran a hand through his scythe-like hair.  
>"Oh shush. It's fine." Tak placed the PAK lovingly in the back of the ship, snapping her fingers for MiMi to jump in before her. Finally, Tak delicately stepped into her ship like a princess climbing into her coach. She swiveled the vehicle around, the cockpit facing Dib.<p>

"So are you coming or what?"

It took a second for Dib to absorb her words. He pushed up his glasses. "What?"  
>Tak rolled her eyes. "You talk about space like it's the greatest thing ever. Do you wanna see it for yourself?"<br>Dib threw up his hands. "I can't just… I have a family!"  
>"Well, we can always drop you off later. It's just a little trip."<br>"What about Zim? He's still out there, what if he conquers the Earth while I'm gone?"

Tak threw back her head and laughed her shrill laugh. "That old fool? He couldn't conquer a single city. It's been a few weeks, hasn't it? Nothing is going to happen."

"_You're running out of time, Agent Mothman_!"

"You won't make it out without me, Dib," said Tak, leaning forward.  
>"I've been promoted, huh?" Dib said, smiling at the use of his real name.<br>Tak smiled impishly and held out her pale and veined hand. Dib took it and she hoisted him into the cockpit behind her.

"Hold on tight!"

The red-tinted shield drew up, and Tak piloted it expertly. She rammed against the double doors, blasting through them as if they were nothing. The metal of her ship easily deflected the bullets that rained upon them, and inside it sounded like hail.

"_See you all in hell!"_ Tak shrieked in delight, maneuvering the vessel at breakneck speed through the underground levels. She knew the labyrinth like the back of her hand, and before the agents could shut off the underground, they were blasting through the elevator shaft, rising vertically faster than any elevator. Dib held on to the back panel for dear life.

A crash that seemed to shake the world, and the Spittle Runner was out in the sky again.

"You're going to love outer space," Tak said with a smile plastered on her face. The ship increased speed as they left the atmosphere, leaving the red sky of Earth – and everything Dib knew – behind.

And for once, Dib didn't doubt for a second whether she was telling the truth.


End file.
